Look! Up in the sky! It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane!

No it’s…Georgi Zhukov?

Perhaps the Red Army will save us.

From the Chicago Tribune:

IRAQ IN TRANSITION: IN BAGHDAD
12 deadly hours jolt Iraqi capital
Coordinated attacks with car bombs kill dozens, hurt over 100

By Aamer Madhani, Tribune staff reporter. Zaid Sabah contributed to this report

June 24, 2005

BAGHDAD -- Four deadly booms echoed throughout the Iraqi capital Thursday morning, capping a 12-hour period in which car bombings killed 40 people and left more than 100 wounded in the Baghdad area.

Since Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari announced his government eight weeks ago, more than 1,200 people have been killed in attacks in Iraq. Nearly half of those killed in that time--580-- have died in car bomb attacks, according to an Associated Press tally.

Possible contradiction

Several hours after the attacks Thursday, Gen. John Abizaid, commander of multinational forces in Iraq, told a Senate committee in Washington that he believed the insurgency was not waning, a view that may have contradicted Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion that the insurgency is "in its last throes."

But in an interview with CNN on Thursday, Cheney defended his "last throes" claim, comparing the recent violence in Iraq to the final months of World War II, when the Battle of the Bulge preceded the collapse of Nazi Germany and the bitter fighting on Okinawa took place before Japan's surrender.

"The most difficult battles, both in Europe and in the Pacific, occurred just a few months before the end," Cheney said. "I see this as a similar situation, where they're going to go all-out. They'll do everything they can to disrupt that process, but I think we're strong enough to defeat them."

The bombings Thursday in the Shiite Karada district killed at least 17 people and wounded 68, according to Iraqi estimates. The blasts came less than half a day after a series of deadly explosions late Wednesday left 23 dead and at least 48 wounded, most of them in another predominantly Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad.
…

In all, four car bombs detonated within a 10-minute span along the commercial street that runs through Karada, according to the Iraq Defense Ministry. The first two car bombs exploded near two Shiite mosques, which both sustained extensive damage. Those blasts were followed by a suicide attacker detonating a car bomb near police officers stopped close to a gas station and another suicide car bomber targeting police officers on patrol near a clothing bazaar, according to the Defense Ministry.
…

Since Dick Cheney is an educated man, a reasonably learned man (“That’s luuurnd, son,” sez Homer J.), I think we can assume that he is not – as are so very, very many of the Cowardly Preening Young GOP Veal Cutlets -- simply abysmally ignorant of world history generally, 20th Century history specifically, and WWII military history very specifically.

I mean, as the Neocon Grand Vizier who actually runs the government as sure as Woodrow Wilson’s wife did after her husband had his stroke, you’d think if he was unclear about who fought who and how and under what colors, he could at the very least blow in a call to Colin Powell who, rumor has it, has some sort of background in the military.

So Cheney isn’t Ignorant, which, Watson, by a process we call Deductive Reasoning, leaves us with one and only one explanation: he’s a Fucking Liar, which doesn’t exactly bowl over anyone against whose soul the GOP doesn’t hold a lien. Cheney lies like my cats breath – loudly, constantly and often while unselfconsciously cleaning their asses in public -- and occasionally he hairballs up a particularly greasy, malodorous piece of agitprop.

Like this one.

He’s not Ignorant, but he clearly depends on other’s being so massively uninformed about the A-B-C’s of Life, The Universe and Everything that whatever he harks up on the carpet will be -- with reverent, white-gloved hands -- daintily scooped up and scuttled away to the GOP Reliquary, to be studied and worshiped as Holy Writ and lay in silk-lined glass cases next to the Bones of Joe McCarthy and a few WIN buttons left over from the Ford Years.

Although it is instructive to note in passing that when pressed on his obviously ridiculous and lying statements, Cheney falls back on WWII metaphors, as if we’re still fighting that kind of war.

As if the delusion that we are fighting that kind of war wasn’t a prime example of exactly the kind of retrograde, ideological “thinking” that continues to fuck us over so tragically in Iraq, and at home.

So here, for the benefit of those poor little Moneyed Children that have been so cruelly Left Behind -- the Rich Retards of the Right who were socially promoted right on past Citizenship, Biology and History 101 and are forced to live out their sad, ignorant lives, barely eking out a subsistence living from the interest on their trust funds, their internships at the Heritage Foundation, their Daddy’s Magic Rolodex and, eventually whatever they can make as President of the United States -- is a quick History for Dummies:

1. In Japan and Germany, see, we were not fighting insurgents. We were fighting to get to the heart of Enemy territory. Once Berlin fell, Germany had fallen. In Iraq we are already in “Berlin.” It took us about 11 minutes to get there. It’s called Baghdad, and two years after taking it, we are in VASTLY poorer shape that we were when Bush announced “Mission Accomplished.”

2. Hussein wasn’t Hitler. For all of the Republican Shock and Outrage about comparisons between Nazi torture and Good, Old American Torture, they are – as always – the very worst offenders, against the rules of rhetorical engagement that they constantly prattle about every else breaking, although in this particular case, for different reasons. The Hitlerization of Hussein began under Poppy Bush and continues right up to this day. Hussein was an evil man, but the Hitler analogy leads the feeble-minded and the ideologically-blinkered (that President Feeb and Vice President Dogma to us mere, fallible mortals) to think they can make war against The Bad Man and once The Bad Man and his House Of Cards (Hey, kids! Remember THAT brilliant idea?) are decapitated, the whole country will fall lightly and naturally into the shape of an America-friendly Democracy.

For those keeping score, “Hitler” was found in a spider hole and has been under arrest for almost exactly a year and a half now…so how’s that workin’ out for ya?

3. Is there a million-man, battle-hardened Red Army is poised along the Turkish and Syrian borders that we don't know about? One ready to sweep into Iraq from the other side and make this a Two Front War – a two front war with traditional, set-piece battles featuring pitched, tank-to-tank and hand-to-hand battles, retreats, retrenching and all of the other hallmarks of the more quaint, mid-20th Century nation-state-vs-nation-state battles? Because if Marshall Zhukof isn’t within sight of Mosul, and leading his hordes of vengeance-starved Soviets, all this talk of Berlin is as “disassembling” as comparing it the wind-and-sail-era victory of Horatio Nelson at the Battle of the Nile.

4. Lastly, we did not beat Japan by island-hopping.

We did not beat Japan taking on an insurgent army in its own country after Tokyo had fallen and the emperor was is prison.

We also, for the record, did not beat Japan by cutting the taxes of American billionaires.

We did not beat Japan by telling the Children of Privilege that they are too Bell Curve Beautiful to sully their pink little paws fighting an Entirely Optional War that they rooted for from Day One, which was djinned up and started by their Daddies. By projecting with every word and deed that it is beneath the sire of the rich to go and actually fight the war they begged for; that that’s a job for the grubby WalWart underclasses who were stupid enough to actually join the Army.

We beat Japan by dropping two nuclear warheads on their country, causing their fully-intact government to sue for peace, although they did get to keep their Emperor.

So unless Cheney is planning to reconstitute the Hussein government and force it to fight a set-piece, mid-20th century battle to the death to defend Baghdad and Hussein…and them call up Putin and beg him to open up a second front…and then drop a nuke or two on Falluja and Karkuk, he is talking entirely out of his ass and hoping that the Cheney Youth are actually stupid enough to swallow this bilge whole.

And based on the degrees of blank idiocy on display thus far by the illiterate Republican lemurs who still loudly play the “Dear Leader Mission Accomplished” anthem on campuses across the land (and then cowering behind the bandstand when the Recruiter Man walks by) I’d say Cheney has no reason to be discouraged.

Here ends the lesson.

And for you GOP Youngsters playing along at home, all of this Dubious and Dangerous Knowledge is available in your average high-school History textbook.

Maybe you should try reading one.