Operation Yellow Elephant Redux

Once upon a time there was a wingnut welfare feeding trough called The Weekly Standard which was run by a blood drunk neoconservative war pimp named Bill Kristol.  And back during the early days of the Age of Bush, Bloody Bill Kristol's horizons appeared to be unlimited.

(Noob sez:  Wow, I know a Never Trumper named Bill Kristol!  I see him on the teevee every day.  I wonder if they are distant cousins or something?

driftglass shakes head, soldiers on.)

Bill Kristol's very good friend Dick Cheney had larded the Bush White House with all of Kristol's ideological running buddies.  Thanks to the cooperation of a supine mainstream press and a relentless barrage of propaganda from Fox News and Hate Radio, the Kristol Konservative Kabal had successfully used the war that had landed in Bush's lap (Afghanistan) to lie their way into the war they wanted (Iraq.)  And they were poised to launch the Neocon's Grand Tour fantasy of using the United States military to decapitate every government of every country in the Middle East they deemed to be problematic.

Or, as Ann Coulter bluntly put it at the time, "Invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity".

What slowed them down was that, over time, no matter how relentlessly men like Bill Kristol lied and loudly their mob of brainwashed imbeciles screamed "Traitor!" at their critics, it became impossible to deny that Iraq was a disaster.  The worst military debacle in a generation and perhaps the worst in American history.

The Neocon's ouchless, easy-to-win war wasn't going to be over in two months.

And it wasn't pay for itself (a few gems from this article in The Nation):

“Iraq is a very wealthy country. Enormous oil reserves. They can finance, largely finance the reconstruction of their own country. And I have no doubt that they will.”

Richard Perle, chair
The Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board
July 11, 2002

“It is unimaginable that the United States would have to contribute hundreds of billions of dollars and highly unlikely that we would have to contribute even tens of billions of dollars.”

Kenneth Pollack
former director for Persian Gulf affairs
National Security Council
September 2002

“Iraq has tremendous resources that belong to the Iraqi people. And so there are a variety of means that Iraq has to be able to shoulder much of the burden for their own reconstruction.”

Ari Fleischer
White House press secretary
February 18, 2003

“There is a lot of money to pay for this that doesn’t have to be US taxpayer money, and it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people. We are talking about a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon.”

Paul Wolfowitz
Deputy Secretary of Defense
testifying before the defense subcommittee
of the House Appropriations Committee
March 27, 2003

Instead, the Neocon's War of Choice bled the treasury dry, pissed away our international reputation, revealed a staggering amount of war profiteering and outright looting by Dick Cheney's cronies, killed thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and broke the United States army, which grew so starved for recruits to feed into the Iraqi meat-grinder that they repeatedly raised the age limit for new recruits, increased the number of mandatory stop-loss redeployments for existing troops from "stressful" to "ridiculous" and began taking criminals and lunatics.

But of course, not The Gays!

And as Bush's Iraqi Clusterfuck grew beyond Fox News' ability to cover up, the war's loudest keyboard patriots found it increasingly difficult to dodge a very basic question about stark difference between their Very Loud, Star-Spangled Rhetoric and their increasingly ridiculous, sniveling excuses for not joining up and taking on the Greatest Existential Threat In The History of Everything.

For example, this is Jonah Goldberg in 2002 when the cotton was high and running his fucking mouth seemed to have zero downside:

I think that war with Iraq is necessary to save lives in the long run. I think that those who are opposed to toppling Saddam are risking American (and Arab and Israeli) lives too.

Soldiers will die in any war, that’s why they call it war.

And here is Doughy Pantload three years later (link no longer active):

As for why my sorry ass isn’t in the kill zone, lots of people think this is a searingly pertinent question. No answer I could give — I’m 35 years old, my family couldn’t afford the lost income, I have a baby daughter, my ass is, er, sorry, are a few — ever seem to suffice.

This was Generation Chickenhawk:

Which triggered the launch of Operation Yellow Elephant (Motto: "It's their war. Why aren't they fighting it?")

And as happens in stories like these, unto The Weekly Standard, a young wingnut whelping named Matthew Continetti born.  Well, not born per se, but hired away from his wingnut welfare intern gig under the loathsome Rich Lowry at the National Review.

Matthew Continetti is one of the many, unanswered, Beltway media "Whys?" Why, why, why does this moon-faced wingnut cipher exist on the media landscape at all?  Why do I continue to see this grinning dullard all over MSNBC and the Sunday Showz regurgitating Republican talking points?

The answer is simple.  He's Bloody Bill Kristol's son-in-law and has learned to perfectly ape his father-in-law's signature move -- smirking dead-eyed into a camera and lying his ass off. 

Over his career as an obedient Republican myrmidon, Mr. Continetti has been a loud and loyal slanderer of Barack Obama.  He wrote a book about the unsung genius of Sarah Palin.  And if you're extremely bored, you could jump to the 30:00 minute mark of this C-Span video from 2007 and find him, fresh from the creche, making the same kinds of sweepingly wrong declarations that made Bloody Bill a favorite at every Beltway cocktail party and guest on every political panel.  Lying about Democrats (Why do Democrat want us to lose?  Huh? Huh?)  Lying about Iraq (The Surge is working people!)  Lying about how we ended up in Iraq.  And imperiously dismissing a caller's indignation that chickenhawks like Continetti -- who were in the full bloom of youth and sound of wind and limb -- could not be troubled to put their asses where their big, loud, lying, superpatriot, wingnut-welfare funded word-holes were.

And so after a couple of decades of being unremittingly wrong, what is Matthew Continetti up to?

Well, just like his father-in-law, Mr. Continetti found himself a Conservative billionaire to bankroll his very own shitty magazine. 

And just like his father-in-law, being unremittingly wrong about everything hasn't affected Mr. Continetti's position as a go-to Conservative pundit in the slightest.

And just like every other Conservative Chickenhawk, when the bloodlust is upon him, his true colors shine through.

Trump Calls the Ayatollah’s Bluff
Column: And scores a victory against terrorism

Matthew Continetti - JANUARY 2, 2020 9:25 PM 

The successful operation against Qassem Soleimani, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, is a stunning blow to international terrorism and a reassertion of American might. It will also test President Trump's Iran strategy. It is now Trump, not Ayatollah Khamenei, who has ascended a rung on the ladder of escalation by killing the military architect of Iran's Shiite empire. For years, Iran has set the rules. It was Iran that picked the time and place of confrontation. No more.

Reciprocity has been the key to understanding Donald Trump. Whether you are a media figure or a mullah, a prime minister or a pope, he will be good to you if you are good to him. Say something mean, though, or work against his interests, and he will respond in force. It won't be pretty. It won't be polite. There will be fallout. But you may think twice before crossing him again...

These people never change.

And they never go away.

Behold, a Tip Jar!