Friday, November 10, 2006

Mr. Wolf takes charge.


Yeah, the coffee’s fine, Junior. Now where's the fucking body?

This was a trope Mr. Gilliard used in August in a different context, and it was too perfect to let it stay interred there.

So I dressed it up with a little Photoshoppery to frame this tale of King George Herbert Walker Lear; the man who gave his empire to his idiot child to play with, and then watched in horror as Dubya methodically fucked the whole works into the ground.

And now Poppy's loyal family retainers must step back out from behind the curtain to save what’s left of the realm from President Fredo's criminally incompetent stewardship.

This from the NYT (emphasis mine)...

November 10, 2006

After Rumsfeld: Bid to Reshape the Brain Trust
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 — Robert M. Gates, President Bush’s choice to become defense secretary, has sharply criticized the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq war and has made it clear that he would seek advice from moderate Republicans who have been largely frozen out of the White House, according to administration officials and Mr. Gates’s close associates.

The administration officials said that Mr. Bush was aware of Mr. Gates’s critique of current policy and understood that Mr. Gates planned to clear the “E Ring” of the Pentagon, where many of Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s senior political appointees have plotted Iraq strategy.

Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, said Thursday afternoon that Mr. Bush regarded his choice of Mr. Gates as “a terrific opportunity” to rethink Iraq.
In doing so, Mr. Gates will be drawing on his experience and contacts from the administration of Mr. Bush’s father, including the former security adviser Brent Scowcroft and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III. “Gates’s world is Brent Scowcroft and Baker and a whole bunch of people who felt the door had been slammed in their face,” one former official who has discussed Iraq at length with Mr. Gates said Thursday. “The door is about to reopen.”

A close friend of Mr. Gates’s described him as having been “clearly distraught over the incompetence of how the Iraq operation had been run.” The friend said Mr. Gates had returned from a recent visit to Baghdad expressing disbelief that Mr. Rumsfeld, whom Mr. Bush ousted Wednesday, had not responded more quickly to the rapid deterioration of security and that the president had not acted sooner to overhaul the management of the war.

Mr. Gates made his visit as a member of the Iraq Study Group, the commission that is preparing to make recommendations next month about overhauling Iraq strategy. Associates said that Mr. Gates had questioned military leaders there about whether more American troops in the capital could stem the violence, and whether the training of Iraqi troops could be overhauled.

“He didn’t take a view,” one colleague said of Mr. Gates. “But he understood the depth of the mess.”


Mr. Scowcroft, who was a mentor to Mr. Gates and to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, was traveling out of the country and could not be reached. But one of Mr. Scowcroft’s business partners, Arnold Kanter, a top State Department official when Mr. Bush’s father was president, said he expected that Mr. Gates would “take a thoroughly pragmatic approach to finding an Iraq solution.”

Mr. Gates, he said, “is poised to be George W. Bush’s Clark Clifford.” It was a reference to the elder statesman whom President Johnson tapped in 1968 to succeed Robert S. McNamara, the polarizing figure who became the face of a failed war.


The haymakers of humiliation for the House of Bush just keep landing. And the rest of us just keep paying the price.

In addition to a platinum-plated name and the speed-dial Sekrit Number of every world leader of the First Water, Poppy bequeathed to Junior two political gifts beyond price: an electoral machine that could get a tube sock full of dog poop and Hanta virus elected President, and a genuinely bad, all-purpose Wondervillain named Saddam Hussein.

A brown boogeyman who had been manufactured, propped up and given teeth by a series of mostly-Republican Administrations to act as a counterweight to Iran. And while the Gulf War and sanctions effectively neutered him, Hussein could still be an added asset to the Republican Value Proposition insofar as he could be trotted out periodically to keep people on edge, and to remind voters of our moral superiority.

But instead of using his inheritances wisely, Dubya did what rich, stupid wastrels do: cashed them out and went on a bender.

Broken into the Treasury and spent that.

Broken into the vault where we’ve kept 50 years of carefully invested international reputation and pissed that away too.

Then hocked our military for a little transient, personal Glory.

And while he and his Neocon pals beggared the nation living large on IOUs backed by the full faith and credit of our children's futures, they were laughing their sodden asses off and bragging about how brilliant they were.

How they didn’t have to play by Daddy’s rules anymore.

How mere “reality” didn’t apply to them.

Wheeeee!

But as around 50 million Americans saw coming as clear as a St. Patrick’s Day Parade down State Street, the Bicycle Chief

has predictably Arbusto-ed to death every, single thing he touched.

So now, at the age of 60, the Fucking President of the United States of America has to have Daddy come and bail his loser ass out of trouble.

Again.

Jesus what an embarrassment you Republicans are.

And so enter Mr. Wolf.

(If you don’t get the reference, Mr. Wolf was Harvey Keitel’s courteous, lead-footed, tuxedoed Mr. Fixit from “Pulp Fiction”. The no-nonsense gentleman sent in by Marsellus Wallace sent in to clean up a bloody, awful mess created by sloppy junkie hit man, Vincent Vega.

JULES
I don't wanna hear about no motherfuckin' "ifs." What I wanna hear from your ass is: "you ain't got no problems, Jules. I'm on the motherfucker. Go back in there, chill them niggers out and wait for the cavalry, which should be comin' directly."


MARSELLUS
You ain't got no problems, Jules. I'm on the motherfucker. Go back in there, chill them niggers out and wait for The Wolf, who should be comin' directly.


JULES
You sendin' The Wolf?


MARSELLUS
Feel better?


JULES
Shit Negro, that's all you had to say.


So to complete the pop-cult trifecta, where this Administration started out with Dubya’s Neocon Garage Band doing an arrogant, wheezing, reality-deaf cover of “The Kids are Alright”, it now ends with scandal, disgrace and Warren Zevon:
I was gambling with the future
I took a massive risk
Send Baker, Gates and Scowcroft
Dad, get me out of this.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ah, yes, Iraq.
What the fuck are we going to do in Iraq?
I know that most everybody wants the troops home soon, but is there any way that we can in some small measure minimize the horrible damage that we have inflicted there before we come home?
I hope to God the Baker study group has some good ideas.

And I don't expect the troops to be home is six months, either. What does anyone else thing? I think....two years? We do have an obligation to try to make things better, or would it be best that we just butt out and go home? Will we see Iraq divided into three countries?
Any foreign policy wonks/history majors out there with anything intelligent (as opposed to my rambling) to bless us with? (And please note that I came here for some intelligent insight, my friends.)

Goddamn, what a horrible situation.

Anonymous said...

We need to add these assholes to the infamous club of dead white men. Fire up the wood chipper...

Anonymous said...

Naw, Baker's the Bush-lookin' cowboy in Mulholland Drive. "You see me once, it's good. You see me twice, it's bad." Baker turned up twice.

-- bjacques

Anonymous said...

Spam, spam, spam, spam ...

Now if only you could have worked in a bit of "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner", that would have been ... perfect.

This has got to be chafing Junior Decider's ass big-time. The guy was already a seething mass of Oedipal angst. He even ditched his real dad for God the Father.

Natasha said...

Well then, somebody else who looks at Bush as a good opportunity to use the word "wastrel." I may be in love ;)

driftglass said...

natasha,
Aw shucks ma'am...

prof fate,
Saving that for the War On Christmas II :-)

bjacques,
Loved that flick.

Anonymous said...

I also had some FUN with photoshoppie and the Pulp Fiction transcripts Too with the Wolf/Duberdog.

It lends itself to SOO many of these POTUS and BAdmin fuck-ups..it's Sooo hard to pick and choose.

*snark*

Anonymous said...

Blogpost of the year.