Sunday Mornin’ Coming Down

In which OberDrunkenführer Chris Hitchens (among others) explains why everyone else – including polar-opposites John Murtha and George Bush – are wrong about the Who, What, When, Where and Why of the enemy we face in Iraq.

The “How” we have apparently gotten right.

Hitchens is pictured here with his general staff planning the historic "Hank's Tap and Titty Bar" invasion of 1991.

“The key to Hank's is the Isle of Gin,” Hitch sez. “Once the Juniper Empire and Sloe Kings are crushed, the Scotch, the Irish and all of the swarthy liquors will fall like dominos. Then, none shall oppose us as we sweep through Russia and the Vodka Steppes!”

On Fox...Even using my Nalley's "Big Chunk" Beef Stew Can Wave Guide, I could only picked up a fuzzy, pirate signal from the Fox Van, currently crisscrossing the East Coast, keeping ahead of the mobs that want to exact a little rough justice from the Princes of Traitor TeeVee, so I only caught a little bit near the midpoint.

Dick Durbin was on Fox saying that an investigation is called for. Impeach? Not impeach? How about we look things first...something the men who pay Chris Wallace’s wages are dead set against.

And I begin to see the outline of strategy. Of Dems pushing off of Feingold's bold stance to say that we should have hearings before we Censure.

And in the same breathe asking, "So remind me again why aren't we having hearings???"

Then static...

When it faded back in again, Bill Kristol was saying something smart.

Zounds!

That President Russ Feingold is actually winning the Censure Argument, not losing it. He has set the terms of the debate. Now we are all talking about Warrentless Wiretaping and what the most appropriate reaction should be to a President who violates the law and the Constitution for that.

I'm glad someone has bothered to notice that Senator Russ' "stunt" landed one right in the GOP wheelhouse, even if it is Kristol.

Hell, even Juan Williams scampered down off his perch atop the Token Spineless Liberal Gibbet to poke Brit Hume in his ruddy eye and invoke the Ghost of Clinton, who sits now at the head of the Truth or Consequences Banquet table smiling.

Hume trying to talk around a mouthful of scalding urine admits that Censure may be smarty, smarty, smart-pants politically, but Americans want us to listen in to Al Qaeda chatter and protect them from being killed, and Feingold apparently doesn’t.

Poor Brit; that line of lying drivel didn’t fly when Scotty McClellan tried to poison the well with it, and it just makes Evil Grumpy Gumby look like Evil Stupid Bitchy Gumby.

Choke on it, Hume.

Kristol: The Republicans cannot go into the midterms running on the issue that we need to keep Congress in order to protect Dubya from impeachment.

Again, Kristol is quite right.

As the Fox signal fades into a wash of background radiation, Hume growls out one more reassuring, shouted-down-from-Martian-polar-orbit-detached nonsense that the Rat People turn in to Fox to feed off of: That the Bad People in Iraq are all al Quaeda, that the Iraqi Army are the Risen Spartans, that they’re wading in to the AQ hordes like the last reel of “Starship Troopers”, and we’re behind them, belt-feeding them ammo, intel and apple pie.

On Face the Nation: Dark Lord Cheney.

As I try not to look directly into the maw of distemper on my teevee, I hear ...

Bob Schieffer ask: Pardon me for interrupting the happy horsehit, but what about civil war? The mass executions? The lack of any government?

Cheney: Hey, it took us longer to put a Government together 200 years ago than the Iraqis so STFU!

And by God, he’s right.

He’s a loathsome, lying lump of evil who should be standing in the dock for war crimes, but he is right…

When the fastest a man could travel was the speed of a good horse…

When telecom meant how loud you can shout across the holler…

When mass media was hand-cranking out 100 copies of broadsheet…

When the time and rigors of reloading your smooth-bore, single-shot weapon had to be factored into your battle plans…

Before there was a postal service…

Before there were any working models of Democracy on which to draw…

When men routinely died of afflictions now long dead, and women routinely perished in childbirth…

When wooden navies ruled the oceans…

Before there was a United States to pour a trillion dollars into a nation-building project, and the most advanced military in history to back it up…

...yes, it took awhile to stand up a government.

And, sorry, that's all the Cheney I can stomach today. He's a tumor in a suit, who lies as casually and unabashedly as my cat cleans its ass.

On This Week...US Senator Chuck Hegal (R-N) and US Senator Jack Reed (D-RI).

Hegal acknowledging the error of his President’s ways for the umpteenth time, on the umpteenth Sunday, but : “We are where we are.” And there is a lot at stake.

Reed: The Iraqis gotta step up.

Reed: If we’re in a Civil War, we need to protect our forces.

(Then he drops The Other "L" Word...)

Reed: It may be like Lebanon. The striking thing about the whole war is the incompetence of this Administration.

And then on to a panel of Journalists featuring Foster Brooks Chris Hitchens, Michael Gordon, and Jackie Spinner.

Michael Gordon – “Cobra II”: The days of finding military solutions in Iraq are behind us. The only solution left here is political.

Hitchens: If we can defeat and isolate the Al Qaeda in Iraq, the whole war would have been worth it.

Wow, Hitch. D’ya think maybe the 30,000 – 100,000 dead Iraqis might disagree with, well, what is the count now? Your 19th redefinition of what “Victory” looks like?

And that perhaps all the Actual Experts who concur that Al Qaeda is a violent footnote in the Civil Warlette that's breaking out like typhus in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley are just mixing their martinis a trifle strong?

But hey, let a thousand gin blossoms bloom, eh Hitch!

And the Persians never pick up the tab at the end of a bender, so fuck ‘em! Let's go ahead and keep them sealed in the NeoCon Petri dish, forcing them to play your particular brand of Nation-building Chainsaw Twister.

And then recycle them as a nation of human bar-rags to sop up your puke and failures.

Arrayed around The Round Table were the usual waxwork artifacts. Cokie, Sam and George showing what a badly oxidizing diorama of “Puerile Punditry of the 80s” will look like after the Museum of Bad Journalism is abandoned to the elements, forgotten, and then disinterred by Chinese archeologists in the early 22nd Century.

Not an ounce of untainted blood nor square inch of fresh ideation anywhere.

Polls show that, well, every-damned-thing-Bush-related is down 25-30%.

Sam: The Preznit has lost the country on Iraq.

George Will advises that Dubya kick the Neocons the curb, and amp up the Fear of Chaos in the Mideast. Drag the definition of “Victory” into the crawl space, under the root cellar, beneath the basement, and hope no one notices that if we were tracking chaos like a disease vector, the White House is Patient Zero.

Sam: Of course Bush is congenitally incapable of admitting that he made mistakes and needs help. Waiting for Daddy’s lawyers to bail him out Toughing it out may be a virtue in West Texas, but here its just fucking nuts.

Sam: The greatest violence is not coming from Al Qaeda ( as Bush himself said, several weeks ago). It’s coming from the sectarian groups making slo-mo Civil War.

But...but...Sam? What about Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Hume and Napoleon Bonaparte Otis Hitchens? Those unimpeachable authorities on all matters martial who say with a certainty that only the desk-and-dogma-bound chickenhawk can muster that the only problem in Iraq is Al Qaeda.

Will: There is no precedent for a small war gaining popularity.

Will: The purpose of the Feingold censure was the “please the Blogosphere. The MoveOn.org crowd.”

driftglass: Well, I am pleased, but I didn’t realize that Left Blogistan got its own Senator.

Cool!

Wonder if the Right gets its own Wisconsin Senator too? And, if so, can they get that Reanimator/pineal-gland/Jamba Juice cocktail whomped up with enough firepower to get “Tailgunner” Joe McCarthy up out of his sodden grave.

I’m sure that, given the ocean of booze and bile in which he steeped himself during his despicable days on this Earth, his corpus is no more or less decomposed than it was when he shambled through the hall of power, shaming the Founders of our Democracy and giving the GOP its first modern Hero.

On...Meet The Press: Gen George Casey. We’re making good political and military progress.

Timmuh throws out a quote from Casey a year ago, saying that a year from then, there should be “substantial troop reductions”.

Sorry, kids, but this was not an “interview” and was never going to be. Good man or bad, an active duty officer, in uniform, during combat is never, ever, ever going to toe anything but the C-in-C’s line.

And that really is as it should be.

A leader who publicly projects to the men and women under his command (and to the folks back home) anything short of optimism and confidence has no business leading people in combat.

Or in the boardroom, on the shop floor, or on a hike in the woods.

I want a military that takes its orders from civilian authority always, not just when I agree with that authority.

Yes, it’s hard-bordering-on-impossible not to sound outright delusional as you hold onto your outward-facing-cheer as the water laps over the top deck of the Titanic, but a leader is responsible for the people under his or her command, and busting out with “Well, truth is, we’re all fucked, and the Preznit appears to have left his right mind in the bottom of a bottle of Dewars some time ago” is not acceptable in a public presentation.

That’s what ex-military are for…

And right on time, out comes Congressman John Murtha.

Punkin Head: regurgitating a quote and/or some poll numbers

Murtha: When 25,000 insurgents are fighting each other in Iraq, and there are (maybe) 1,000 AQ Iraq, that’s a fucking Civil War.

(But…but…Congressman? Nathan Bedford Hume and Gaius Julius Dudley Moore Hitchens both agree that the only problem in Iraq is Al Qaeda? Now I am even more confused.)

Murtha: Yes, I was wrong. And at some point, when you’re wrong, you have to change course. That’s why I changed my mind. My vote for the war was a mistake.

Punkin Head: regurgitating a quote and/or some poll numbers

Murtha: During the first war, the first President Bush had a plan. He had an alliance…that picked up the tab. He never, ever made the mistake of trying to take Iraq,

This President, I thought we were giving him a club with which to negotiate. To get inspections working. But when I found out that there was no threat to our national security. That the primary reason we were given to make this war in the first place was just, plain wrong….

Punkin Head: regurgitating a quote and/or some poll numbers

Murtha: You know who wants us in Iraq? Iran wants us in Iraq. China. Al Qaeda wants us in Iraq. It is bankrupting us. It is diverting us from the GWOT, not focusing us on it.

The world would be safer if Saddam were still in charge AND we were keeping him under control.

Like we did during the entire Clinton Administration.

Ouch.

Punkin Head: And if the President asked you for advice on how to get out of this quagmire?


Murtha: First, you should fire every asshole that is responsible for this Fucktacular Mess. Those responsible for the intel, the marketing and the execution of this disaster.

Punkin Head: regurgitating a quote and/or some poll numbers

Murtha: The Army is broken.

Punkin Head: regurgitating a quote and/or some poll numbers

Murtha: You can’t really fire the Vice President, but…everything he said in the run up to this war turned out not to be true.

Punkin Head: regurgitating a quote and/or some poll numbers.

Murtha: I visit the hospitals. I see the price our kids are paying. And will be paying for the rest of their lives.

Punkin Head: regurgitating a quote and/or some poll numbers.

Murtha: It’s like Katrina. If [Bush] had acted quickly they might have saved the situation. But he didn’t.

Punkin Head (soiling himself in grunting incredulity): But if we leave, them what do we do? Just sit back and watch the slaughter?

driftglass: Hey, Russert? Are you calling for a draft? For putting the tender flesh of the whelplings of the Ruling Class on IED detail in the desert? To prop up our broken Army trapped between factions rolling out a Civil War?

Because, if so, please speak up.

If not, do the math and Shut Up.

Murtha asks the right question: So what happens if we stay? Huh, Big Head? What happens then?

Murtha: When I go past the graveyards, past Arlington, I don’t see Democrats or Republicans – I see Americans.

Murtha: The media isn’t losing this war. Go back and look at what the warhawks were saying as we were losing that war. Blame The Press.

Shorter Murtha: “Same Shit: Different Nixon.”

And thus we leave the Sunday Morning Mouse Circus, where at the moment the answers are being meted out by the capable, while the “questions” are being Pez-ed forth by the execrable...