Special Ops: Wimping out in GWOT?

I think the US military has been infiltrated by either Islamofascists or the Peace Corps. These people are clearly not taking the great advice of right wingers and simply blowing everything up and killing as many people as humanly possible.

The special operations guys are talking about being more sensitve in the war on terror and talking nonsense about not indiscriminately killing everyone in sight:

It is not uncommon for a battle-ready Army special forces team to rumble into a remote village and spend most of its time painting mosques, drilling wells and running medical clinics.

"It's basically anything that doesn't involve combat operations against terrorists," said Andrew Feickert, a national defense specialist at the Congressional Research Service in Washington. "As Admiral Olson has said, we're not going to kill our way to victory." [Emphasis mine]

What'll they do next, propose that we actually work with other countries thru diplomacy and aid?

Fridovich will run the Center for Special Operations, a 4-year-old organization located at MacDill that plans and oversees anti-terrorism campaigns. He will replace Lt. Gen. Dell Dailey, who has retired and been nominated by Bush to be the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism.

Fridovich has spent the past six years in the Pacific region helping guide what the military considers a successful effort against Abu Sayyaf, an al-Qaida outgrowth in the Philippines. In a recent edition of the military journal Joint Force Quarterly, Fridovich wrote that the U.S. "cannot simply enter sovereign countries unilaterally and conduct kill-or-capture missions. It must blend host nation capacity building and other long-term efforts to address root causes, dissuade future terrorists, and reduce recruiting."

This indirect approach, Fridovich added, "demands diplomacy and respect for political sensitivities." [emphasis mine]

Goddamn! The special operations commander is talking like a libtard. What do right-wingers have to say about this?

I expect right wingers will rise up and condemn such softness from our most elite warriors. This Dhimmicratic rhetoric will demoralize the other forces. I'm sure right-wingers will consider this change of course to be traitorous and suitable only for surrender monkeys and that they will write a lot of posts condemning this assistance to Muslims. One of these clever right-wingers will have to come up with a funny label to smear the Special Ops guys. Special Surrender Monkey Forces? Pink Berets? Defeat Force? Marine Force Retreat?

What next? Gay special forces recruits?

Passionate America, Wild Bill: No longer covering the war

I just looked thru the Passionate America website and see that NONE of the contributors, let alone the stay-at-home-dad who runs it, 'Wild' Bill, have posted about the Iraq War, the Afganistan War or the Global War on Terror (GWOT) since at least the beginning of May. When I recently asked them who in their lineup of contributors would be covering the war, I was informed:

Billy Joe if you would like to cover the war then go ahead on your blog. We’ll get to it on our own schedule.

I wonder why they're so nonchalant about getting all of the good Iraq news out? Is it because the Commander in Chief declared victory 3+ years ago? Did they get bored with their favorite war? For a group of people who supposedly support our troops & their mission so much, doesn't it seem like they would spend more time paying attention to the wars and perhaps even devoting more than 1 occasional, vague sentence that lamely expresses their "support" for the troops.

A few years ago, they used to bitch that the 'liberal' media wasn't covering the good news about the wars. Now, right-wingers don't even bother covering the good news themselves. If we're engaged in WWIII (or is it WWIV now?), as they claim, why do you suppose the wars no longer warrant their own posts on the Passionate America blog? I bet back in WWI & WWII war hawks discussed the war and it's progress every single day. Instead, over at Passionate America, you have news about everything but the war.

What's wrong, right wingers? How will we win the war when you guys are cutting-and-running from even fighting for the mission on the web? I fail to see how a complete failure to discuss the wars shows any sort of respect to the soldiers who are over there.

Wild Bill proposes defunding US Troops, Iraq War, GWOT

Who would have imagined? Wild Bill is so spitting mad about illegal immigration that he's proposing a general strike against the US government to deprive them of money and to punish them for not building a new Berlin Wall along the US-Mexico border. He sounds like a raving Communist! Says Bill:

I say we show them what happens when everyone decides it is acceptable to break one law. How long do you think it will take them to spring into action once the coffers have run dry?

Who's going to finance his favorite war, that he hardly ever writes about? Is he planning to abandon the troops in Iraq with no bullets?

Does he expect us to borrow ALL (not some) of the money to fight the war from the Saudis, the Chinese and the Japanese?

Regarding the strike concept he's proposing which amounts to staying home from work until Washington listens: It's easy for him to do - he's a stay-at-home dad!

Once again, Wild Bill leads the charge from the rear. I do hope he'll let us know how it goes.

I'm not fundamentally against what he's proposing, but there are consequences and one of those would be to deprive the military of money that they need to fight Bush's war. Is Bill saying he'd rather surrender to the Islamunists? Given the real-world implications of his proposal, that's what it sounds like to me.

I can't wait 'till the other right wingers lay into him for being a surrender monkey!

Why are Iraqis fleeing from the Freedom (tm) we gave them?

I guess because Freedom is on the march and they don't want to get crushed by the tank treads?

According to the UN (I know, you can't believe their 'liberal' statistics and data), the number of refugees worldwide increased 14% last year (up to 9.9 million).

No less of a moral authority than the Pope himself, defines 'Refugees' as:

people “forced to flee from their countries as a result of true life-threatening dangers.”

And guess what? We're involved in two of the four countries who experienced a rise in the number of refugees

Last year was one of the worst on record for refugees and the crisis is deepening in 2007 thanks to conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan’s Darfur region...

Mission Accomplished indeed. 2 million fleeing Iraqis won't destabilize the Middle East and provide fertile recruiting targets for Muslim radicals at all. Gee... I wonder why the U.S. is viewed as one of the most dangerous countries in the world?

At last, something we can probably agree on.

Are you ready to take off your training wheels and venture outside of the virtual gated right-wing online community?

There's a good post about how American firms circumvent US labor laws to import cheap technology workers. And it's at Daily Kos (gasp!). There's a video of a legal conference on how to NOT hire American workers.

I'd like to think it's something we can all agree is outrageous. Please feel free to leave any comments. When I'm not trying to break your balls, I actually do like knowing what you guys think.

Basti vs. Kender: Do you prefer vomit or diarrhea?

In the Special Education, Tourette Syndrome afflicted, Ken Mehlman violated sphincter-end of the Republican party, we find:

Basti: A cut-and-running two-bit authoritarian, who seems to think that he is magically protected from radioactive fallout that will rain down on him when we follow his harebrained advice and nuke "ragheads" in the middle east and libtards in his proposed concentration camps in America.

Kender: I'm sure he spends much of his day eating battery acid & urinating into funky PET bottles that surround him in his hovel, but in his spare time, he challenges me to back up my assertions and when I do, he channels his inner left behind child, ignores my point and swears like an illiterate, inbred retard.

Have a look in the comments to my previous posts. Kender apparently thinks it's A-OK that America is arming Saddamists and Sunni insurgents that we just spent $1/2 Trillion to defeat and who we know have killed Americans. Yes, Kender has no problem at all arming the "evildoers" & "terrorists". Some people might call someone like that a traitor. I wonder what Kender calls it? Maybe we'll be lucky and Kender will defend himself in the comments. Maybe he'll surprise us with "reason" or "logic". Either way should be fun. If he responds as he usually does, you'll see again how mentally deficient he is. If he attempts to explain what he thinks he'll probably show us how mentally deficient he is, anyway.

If I had to choose which one is the dumbest person I have encountered in the right-wing blogosphere (that is an incredibly low hurdle, by the way), I would have to choose diarrhea, er, Kender. Basti is a cut-and-running fool and dumb as a doorknob, but Kender is belligerently ignorant. Facts are of no concern to Kender. He sacrifices his extremely limited intelligence at the alter of ideology and simply ignores everything else, like America arming Saddamists, again, or Republicans criticizing the military.

Will they ever learn?

Meet the (Saddamist) Allies

Does this mean the Iraqis are standing up and that we can stand down now? Who gets to deliver the news to the American victims' families of these people to tell them that we're rewarding Saddamists with power and arms and that their family members died for no reason whatsoever? I doubt that task will fall to the Commander in Chief.

According to senior Iraqi Government official, who described the US military policy of partnering with Sunni groups as "nonsense":

"Every three months they have a new strategy. This is not only a distracting way to conduct policy, it is creating insecurity for all. I don't think these strategies have been thought through deeply. It is all about convenience," the official said, who spoke on condition of anonymity. [Emphasis mine: Gee, it sounds like a harebrained scheme that would be dreamed up by a right-winger!]

"In reality, they are forcing the Iraqi government and the Shi'a and the Kurds to reconcile with the Saddamists," the official added. "This is similar to going to the South in 1865 and forcing the Confederates to reconcile immediately with the Northerners. And this is not going to happen."

What? The quote above seems to be implying that Iraq is mired in a civil war. Can we use the word "Civil War" or do we need to wait until Karl Rove & George Bush give their approval?

Some of these groups, believed to be affiliated with such organizations as the Islamic Army or the 1920 Revolution Brigades, have received weapons and ammunition, usually through the Iraqi military, as well as transportation, food, handcuffs, and direct assistance from US soldiers. In Baghdad's Amiriyah neighborhood, a local group of Sunnis, the Baghdad Patriots, were driven around earlier this month in American and Iraqi vehicles and given approval by US forces to arrest suspected Al Qaeda in Iraq members.

Wild Bill, Smokey, Big Dog, Kender, or anyone else: do you guys have any opinion about the fact that the Bush Administration is arming Saddamists who have killed American troops? Do you think it's a good idea to arm groups called "The Islamic Army" or the "1920 Revolution Brigades"?

Right Wing Blogosphere, Drinking Canned Indignation

Right-wingers are in an uproar over Harry Reid calling the recently fired General Pace "incompetent." Like Pavlov's dogs, when Karl Rove decides to create a side show to distract the public from the rudderless war in Iraq, the right-wing jumps into action.

It seems the military is above reproach and cannot be criticized under any circumstances, ever. Unless a Democrat is Commander-in-Chief and then it'll probably be perfectly acceptable. But anyway, it seems military leaders should not be criticized, ever and Big Dog, for example is so fricken mad over it that he wishes Pace would beat up Senator Reid.

Of course, the story is never as simple as the right-wing likes to think it is:

Gordon Smith (R-OR) said the following:

As the 109th Congress drew to a close, Sen. Gordon Smith took to the Senate floor and delivered a scathing indictment of President Bush’s policy in Iraq. Gordon said, “I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way being blown up by the same bombs day after day.” Smith added, “That is absurd. It may even be criminal.” Watch it

Did you catch that? Smith wasn't just saying incompetent. He was actually saying that either the Pentagon's handling of the war or the White House itself may be CRIMINAL.

How about this one, from McCain:

McCain himself made "disparaging remarks" about the "commander of our troops in Iraq" in January. Casey served as commander of the coalition forces until February 10, and on the January 21 edition of NBC's Meet the Press, McCain told host Tim Russert that he was concerned about Casey's "failed leadership":

RUSSERT: Failed policy. General Casey now is returning back to the United States. He's been nominated to be the chief of staff of the Army. Will you support and vote for his confirmation?

McCAIN: I have very serious concerns about General Casey's nomination. I'm concerned about failed leadership, the message that sends to the rest of the military. I have hard questions to ask him, and I'm very skeptical about it.

RUSSERT: As of today, you're leaning no.

McCAIN: Yes. Yes.

when these remarks are pointed out to right wingers, I get back either no response or something that is so mind-bogglingly moronic that it's almost brilliant, like this little gem from Kender:

why should I comment on what mccain says when I don’t care what he says….he isn’t goingto get the nod for the run at the office, he is an appeasing dumbass that only a twit like you would pay attention to…..

So there you have it, folks! Kender has just come out and admitted he doesn't even care about the truth. Apparently he'd rather save his indignation for Democrats because Republicans who say such things aren't of interest. Willful ignornace in the right-wing blogosphere... Who would have known?

Definition of Treason

Dictionary definition: betrayal of country: a violation of the allegiance owed by somebody to his or her own country, e.g. by aiding an enemy

From George Bush Sr., former head of the CIA:

"We need more human intelligence. That means we need more protection for the methods we use to gather intelligence and more protection for our sources, particularly our human sources, people that are risking their lives for their country. Even though I'm a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious, of traitors." - George H.W. Bush, April 16, 1999, Dedication Speech, George Bush Center for Intelligence

Valerie Plame was a covert agent. If she wasn't, why did the CIA request an investigation into the leak of her identity and why did the Bush Justice Department agree to do the investigation? And why did Bush claim (wrongly, it turns out) that he would fire whomever was responsible for the leak? But anyway, Plame was working on issues of nuclear proliferation. Her identity was exposed by the Bush Administration and Cheney's former Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, was found guilty of Obstruction of Justice and Perjury in a jury trial conducted by a Bush appointed prosecutor in front of a Bush appointed Judge.

If someone supports Libby's attempt to protect the indentity of the leaker(s), would this not make them accomplices to treason? Kender? Maybe you could help us out? Maybe you could try to do it without profanity for once? It's funny how right-wingers like to assail "libtards" as being traitors and anti-American. Ann Coulter wrote an entire book about it. But when it's thrown back at them, they get so indignant.

Mind you, this Administration violates the Constitution itself on a regular basis (warrantless wiretapping, for example), so they should already be impeached on that basis alone, but right-wingers won't care about that until a Democrat is doing it and then right-wingers will be forced to deal with the consequences of their indifference to such violations when Bush set the precedent. Way to go, guys!

Can someone besides bin Laden tell me how this = success?

Graph from the DoD showing the number of attacks in Iraq over time. Notice a pattern?

Notice how attacks on "Coalition" forces represent almost 70% of the total. I wonder how much those would go down if we left? It seems self evident to me that they would decline to zero or near zero because US forces would be out of range of their guns & car bombs. The other question is what would happen to attacks on Iraqis and Iraqi government forces if we left? Would they skyrocket? Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing for sure.

Anyway, it's quite a situation the Commander-in-Chief has gotten us into, isn't it?

Financial cost of US Empire about to increase?

Interesting news about NY suing diplomatic missions for property taxes, unpaid parking tickets, etc. Embassies and their staff are often exempt from taxes, have legal immunity, etc.. The UN could be sued, too.

I suppose this would bring a tear of joy to the eyes of anti-UN types. NY alone stands to gain $100,000,000+ in property taxes and penalties from the foreigners.

The problem is, now those countries will be free to reciprocate in relatiation. What's good for the goose is good for the gander! Why would this bother Americans who don't give a flying f**k about foreign countries? Because we have massive embassies in prime real estate around the world.

For example, they said, the cash-strapped localities of Baghdad and Kabul could now argue that Washington should pay taxes on the U.S. embassies there, both of which contain housing quarters for hundreds of staff. If the United States objects, they could decide to sue given the Supreme Court ruling.

"The cornerstone of diplomatic relations is reciprocity; without reciprocity the whole system fails," said lawyer Andrew Odell, a former general counsel for New York City's U.N. and Consular Corps Commission. "Any affected country will in some fashion seek retribution. They will do something to mete out reciprocity, it's just the nature of bilateral relations."

So, if this holds, get ready to start paying more to maintain America's overseas empire. I don't know if it affects military bases overseas, but if it did, we'd probably owe billions more in Japan, alone.

More broadly, the finding could also jeopardize traditional rights and privileges that date back to ancient Greece and are enshrined in international treaties, notably the Vienna Convention, which grants immunity from most civil and criminal prosecutions to diplomats on foreign soil.

This slippery slope could result in Americans losing diplomatic immunity overseas. How would this affect intelligence operations? How would this affect our ability to go after terrorists? Time will tell.

Who knows, maybe Americans are about to learn the true price of empire maintenance. At least then, they could decide if it's something they actually want.

Introducing Wild Bill, Unemployed Conservative

Wild Bill recently wrote a "proposal" (I'm using this term very loosely) to solve the problem of illegal immigrant "beaners" on his blog. In that post, he wrote:

The conservatives are too busy working and paying taxes to take a day off and round up a person just trying to make a better life for themselves and there family.

Wild Bill gained a bit of notoriety in 2006 when, just prior to the election, he outed the Congressional page who was being sexually harrassed by Mark Foley. Following this journalistic breakthrough, the (liberal?) Wall Street Journal did an article on Wild Bill. Here's what we learned about him:

It has been a heady time for the unemployed Mr. Kerr. He says he had been fired from several jobs over the years -- installing car radios, working for a call center -- and was discharged from the Navy in 1993 after faking a suicide attempt. He volunteers that years ago he was arrested for burglary. These days, he is a stay-at-home dad, taking care of his two sons, the younger of whom is 3 years old. Mr. Kerr's wife supports the family with her job at a call center here. Mr. Kerr says he has never met a famous person or a member of Congress. "I need to get out of the house more," he says.

So, when Bill refers to "conservatives being too busy working and paying taxes" he's not actually referring to himself. While it would be nice if he fit into his own preconceived notions of what a conservative is, he doesn't. His wife does, but he himself doesn't.

Maybe he should try humility for once? Even the "beaners" are working while he stays at home surfing the web.

Iraq news: Pentagon (the military!) says violence in Iraq escalating

If you haven't actually read any Iraq news this week:

...al-Maliki had pledged in January, when President Bush announced his commitment to send more U.S. troops to Baghdad, that there would be no political interference in the security crackdown and no sectarian favoritism.

"To date, operations in Baghdad indicate that Iraqi government delivery on these commitments has been uneven," the report said. "For example, there have been reports of political involvement by some leaders in tactical and operational decisions that bypass the standard chain of (military) command."

Great! On a scale of 1 to 100, the Iraqis are at "2". At this rate we'll only have to be there for 100 more years. Why don't we just grant them their wish and leave their country already?

The Pentagon is calling this an "increase in violence". There are even more American and Iraqi deaths. Yet the Commander in Chief calls this success. Dick Cheney said the insurgency was in it's "last throes" - more than a year ago, before things had spun this far out of control. Even Big Dog considers this "winning".

Right-wing Iraq war cheerleaders define an escalation in violence plus more Iraqi & American deaths as "success". Just like bin Laden.

Talk about strange bedfellows.

In battle to get out the good Iraq news, right-wingers shoot blanks, still haven't noticed

The right wingers are still not getting the good news out about Iraq. Why are they cutting-and-running when there is supposedly so much good news and we are so "winning" the occupation?

Inexplicably, the few times recently that right-wingers can bring themselves to mention the Iraq war, it's in the context of implying that Al Gore would have done the same thing Bush did. Would he have done it as incompetently? The question is moot. This is Bush's war now - he's the Commander in Chief - and he has to take responsibility for the success or failure of it.

Other happenings in Wing-nutia:

• Big Dog gives his readers some frightening immigration numbers that a friend e-mailed to him. We should all exercise the same level of intellectual rigor as Big Dog and use data from unsourced e-mails to debate our opponents. In right wing world, that counts as hardcore research. Hey, that sounds a bit like how we got ourselves into Iraq when I think about it. Anyway, checkmate libtard!
• No mention whatsoever of the fact that the US is now arming Sunni Militia and Saddam loyalists in Iraq after spending $500,000,000,000 to defeat THE SAME PEOPLE. And no alarm whatsoever that such aid to anti-Iraqi government forces might come back to haunt us. NOTE: Wing-nuts still having difficulty grasping the concept of cause and effect. NOTE TWO: Everyone else, get ready to pay the price for the stupidty of Wing-nuts. Again.
• At Passionate American, ignorance is bliss.
• At Smoke Signals, nothing.

Right Wing Blogosphere: Paris Hilton is back in jail! Meanwhile, US aligns itself with Sunni militia, Saddam loyalists.

Right-wing blogs have been abuzz over the news about Paris Hilton. I bet next week they'll offer us wall-to-wall Lindsey Lohan coverage. Whoopee! I find it revealing though that none of them have directly addressed the war in Iraq for more than a week (some of them much longer). I guess Paris Hilton is more important to at least some of them. Yes, Weiner Dog and Smokey, I'm talking to you.

Meanwhile, look who our new allies are in Iraq! Saddam loyalists, who I thought we just spent a 1/2 trillion dollars fighting, and also Sunni Militias, who we're also arming, by the way. (Full article available here):

The American soldiers in Amiriyah have allied themselves with dozens of Sunni militiamen who call themselves the Baghdad Patriots -- a group that American soldiers believe includes insurgents who have attacked them in the past -- in an attempt to drive out al-Qaeda in Iraq. The Americans have granted these gunmen the power of arrest, allowed the Iraqi army to supply them with ammunition, and fought alongside them in chaotic street battles.

Says a US intelligence officer:

"We have made a deal with the devil," said an intelligence officer in the battalion.

In one particular battle between the militias and al Qaeda it was reported:

To the Americans, the fighters on both sides appeared nearly identical. They wore similar sweat suits and carried the same kind of machine guns. "Now we've got kind of a mess on our hands," Salge remembered thinking. "Because we've got a lot of armed guys running all over the place, and it's making it very hard for us to identify which side is which."

Mission accomplished! Boy, this is going to turn out great, I just know it!

Bush is really the best Commander-in-Chief in the history of the universe. I can't wait 'till Fred Thompson, the man who can speak English well and who played the roles of leaders on teevee, gets into office and then he can finish the terrorists off. Once we figure out a way to tell apart the terrorists and the militias, that is. Maybe Thompson will take Weiner Dog's advice and "kill all of their leaders and cripple their religion". Whatever that means. Weiner Dog's plans are no different from those devised by a 5 year old, or by Smokey for that matter. I can seldom determine what they're actually advocating or if it is in anyway realistic. If anyone else has brilliant ideas for winning the war, please leave them in the comments.

Final note, right-wing nutjobs really should use their blogs to get out all of the good Iraq news they're always talking about! Failure to do so could result in Chickenhawks sounding like they're losing their will to fight the war from the comfort of their basement.

Fred Thompson, R-Hollyweird: Lobbyist, lawyer and thespian energizes right wing morons!

Looking around the right-wing blogosphere recently, I'm struck by how desperate the Republicans have become to find someone who will represent the traitorous, Scooter Libby-defending chickhawk wing of the Republican Party.

Who would have imagined their savior would be a lawyer-turned Senator turned lobbyist turned Hollyweird actor? Much to the delight of the of the kill-em-all, pro-life right wing branch of the Republican Party, Fred Thompson, the 65 year old "Tennessee Stud" (as he was known before settling down recently with his buxom 40 year old second wife), is kind of talking about maybe getting around to filing his paperwork so that he can run for President.

Frankly I'm not sure why he's any better than, say, Tancredo, or Brownback and I have yet to get any sort of explanation from right-wingers, but I think it's because they are star-struck. In spite of their protestations to the contrary, it fills them with endless joy to know that their candidate will be the man who has pretended to be a leader on TV before. I guess that's a little more inspiring than the current leading candidate who is being considered largely because he was caught on film walking thru the ground up remains of the WTC complex where he stupidly placed his emergency bunker, but I digress.

Instead of traditional campaign commercials, Thompson should pay for weekly 30 minute TV slots. FOX would probably give him a discount. His staff could create mini-dramas, maybe with Jack Bauer, of Thompson leading America in an ass-kicking of the world. There could be "Law and Order: Gitmo" where he pretends to condemn a hapless goat herder (who was sold to the US military by a rival goat herder) to death. Another episode could have him dressed up in military uniform nuking the UN headquarters and NY liberals.

Another episode could have him directing a sexy secret agent (his 2nd wife!) as she wears a tight bodysuit like that worn by Ms. Underestimated. As Thompson barked commands at her, she could obediently, like a good Christian woman, waste illegal border crossers with the gun she keeps strapped to her younger, sexy leg.

The possibilities are as endless as examples of George W. Bush incompetence. Such mini-drama commercials would show that Thompson is serious about fighting terrorism and Mexicans.

Then, when he's President, he can "think beyond Iraq" (I guess that's one way for him to avoid hard Iraq questions!) and we can get ready to invade the next Islamofascist country with our not-broken-at-all military. We'll be able to finance the next war with all of the money that grows on trees somewhere. It's going to be so awesome when we finally defeat Islamofascism and the right wing scaredy cats can finally get out from under their beds and buy gas without fearing the former-Muslim-but-newly-converted gas station attendent. Right-wingers will be able to get a life and it will all be because of Fred Thompson.

Fred Thompson will have streets in Damascus and Tehran named after him. With his Hollyweird Razzle-Dazzle, the rest of world will love him. It'll be just like the movies, with Fred Thompson playing the role of his life: The President who knew more about makeup than Hillary.

Have an idea for Fred Thompson poltical commercials? Please add them in the comments. I think we should leverage his Hollywood past.