Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

U.S. Dudgeon General Condolezza Rice talks to kids about War. That as Life begins exactly halfway between the first mojito and penetration, so Democracy begins at Election. And even though Iraq has a Blastocyst Gummint – a cluster(fuck) of undifferentiated, sectarian cells – they’re alive I tell’s ya!

Alive!

Fox News: Mike Tobin reporting from real estate on the business end of rocket attacks.

U.S. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

Hadley: The Ceasefire Two Step. Everyone now agrees to the elements of a ceasefire. It’s now about “sequencing”. The Majyk International Force will move in, support the Lebanese army and disarm Hezbollah.

It will be the responsibility of the Lebanese Government to implement everything.

Newt Gingrich: It’s like Munich, 1938. Attaboy, Newt. A man who can always be relied on to give babies killer-clown-shaped grenades instead of pacifiers.

Joseph Biden: We have no strength or credibility in the region.

Wallace: Forces of extremeish vs. freedomness. Who is winning?

Biden: Judge by Dubya’s own words. We embolden our enemies. There is no comprehensive strategy.

Wallace: How real is the danger of a Shia Crescent?

Gingrich: You forgot Poland. And Venezuela! And Burkina Faso! And that fistfight in a Manila bar. And a butterfly flapping its wings in Indonesia. There is a world coalition of terrorists that (SMERSH Lives!) collaborate in ways we do not understand. And yet I feel plenty confident in asserting that they’re all in on everything together, and that Churchill something something, Munich, something something, 1938 something something.


Newt: The Left Wing of his Party would like to withdraw, while we need non-appeasement strategy. The Man from D.U.B.Y.A


whines that we have lacked a Ronald Reagan-like effort to stem Thrush’s International campaign of something something Ilya Kuryakin something…

You mean…selling weapons to Iranian terrorists?

And then lying about it?

Or do you mean letting 800 Marines be slaughtered in Lebanon?

Or the subsequent cut-and-run from Lebanon?

You mean Reaganesque genius like that?

The meta-theme today was the Name Game.

The wingnut game of "How can we keep not calling what is going on in Iraq a Civil War." It is the murderously insane endgame of the kind of “thinking” that has been the lynchpin of the Rove Presidency: If you just keep calling bolt-cutter castration “lemonade”, Republicans – being mostly one breed of idiot or lunatic or another – will line right up to have their dicks cut off because they’re so darned thirsty.

In other words, it is important to understand that “civil war” in this context has nothing to do with any military definition – it is a political term.

As you no doubt have noticed, the GOP gets quite extravagantly frisky inventing out of whole cloth the idea of linking every mugging in Mindanao with Iraq and Lebanon and declaring the status quo to World War III. And yet, at exactly the same time scampering like scalded mouse babies away from calling the Civil War in Iraq…a Civil War in Iraq.

Why?

Well you must remember that those still standing by this White House are congenital liars. Or insane. Or evil. Or mean drunk on bad religion. Take your pick: it’s 37 different flavors of shithouse rat crazy over there – served up cafeteria-style – but what they all know is that the minute the public perception of Iraq slips from Terror Turbo into Civil War Reverse, we’re outta there.

Because while the general public may not know the Maginot Line from the Electric Slide, they all know – under their skin and deep in their Vietnam RNA – that Americans do not belong in the middle of another country’s shooting gallery.

Because Americans can do nothing but die uselessly in someone else’s civil war.

Which is why the Right is hysterical not to call it that. But WWIII? Hey, then it’s “Everybody into the pool!”

On Face the Nation: Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.)

Real News from Lee Cowan in Beirut.

Hagel: The President of the United States must be personally involved in this [Lebanon].

Dodd: Too much time was allowed to elapse since this began. I have heard – and I may be wrong – that the President still haven’t even had a conversation with his peers. With Olmert. With other world leaders. WTF?

Hagel: We once did this Middle East thing competently. Administration to administration, we have worked this and walking away from was insane. We can find our way back but have to change the assbackwards way we’ve [translation: Dubya’s] been conducting our bidniz in the region.


Dodd: 100 violent deaths a day. 10,000 deaths in the last 4 months. This is a civil war. The generals were telling us something the other day loud and clear if you’re willing to listen. The Iraqi people seem to be unable or unwilling to take this on. But they must.

Hagel: We’ve been there 3.5 years, and lat month was the worst month in the last 3.5 years. To reverse our policy of a mere five weeks ago to draw-down troops, and are now pouring more men into Baghdad? Iraq is not going to turn out the way we were promised it would. That is a fact. A simple fact.

There are no good options anymore. And it is very wrong to put American troops into this hopeless, winless situation.

Bob Schieffer: But if we pull out, won’t badness ensue?

Hagel: As I said, there are no good answers. So let me ask you, Bob, what are the alternatives?

Crickets…

Dodd: A-fucking-men. This is where Presidential leadership matters. We have given Iraq an incredible opportunity and I cannot ask any more Americans. This is Bush’s job. Bush’s responsibility. Like the bust-out, inept drunktard he has always been, he has screwed up yet another venture beyond redemption, and his Big Plan -- his entire fucking plan -- is to kick it down the road and let someone else worry about it. He should be calling up his father. His real, actual, earthly father. He should call up Clinton.

Hagel: We are ruining our Army. Decimating it. Talk to any officer, quietly, and they’ll tell you exactly that.

Bob: But that would you say to the Administration who say that pulling out would make things worse?

Hagel: Ok, let me repeat this slowly. What? Is? The? Alternative?


On “This Week…” – Condi enters the Silly Season, guns blazing, on full auto.

Condi discovers the “International Community” and sez, “Chill people; we’re mere inches away from a cease-fire.”

George Stephanopoulos: WTF? Both parties just said that they have no intention to sign on to this shit.

George: Double-WTF? You’re “voting” on a plan without that neither principal has agreed to?

Condi: The Iraqi people have not chosen civil war. They voted. And apparently people who vote don’t do civil war.

That’s gonna come as awful weird news to the Confederacy.

George: If Civil War breaks out will US troops be withdrawn?

Condi: That is a hypothetical. And I’m not going to answer a hypothetical.

Condi: The South has not walked out.

Condi: Yes, the Iraqis have to “get a handle on” this sectarian violence.

Condi: They are a new government. Weak and coltish.

Condi: This is a Unity Government. They were elected. It would be a big mistake to say that Iraq is sliding towards civil war. This is a new government. Fresh. Like Bambi; all knees and wobble.

But sooooo cute.

Then George goes full Karma Bum, leaps into the Stephanopoulosmobile and heads up to Connecticut for Lieberman vs. Lamont

Lamont looks…Senatorial.

What more does one need to say?

Roundtable: Sam Donaldson, Cokie Roberts, and George Will.

Cokie Roberts: Lamont is a disaster for the Democratic Party. Pushing it to the Left. The Evil Left. And you end up playing to the Base.

Shorter -- “The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All” – Cokie: I have lost the last bit of my damned mind.

Seriously, I thought she was going to tell Mr. DeMille she was ready for her close-up, she was that unhinged. Apparently anything other than complete, abject capitulation to the Right is “bad for Democrats”.

Sam: You ridiculous bint – it’s not playing to your base. It’s playing to the country. The reason to take on Lieberman is because for the last three years, every time Bush has gotten himself in a corner, and Dems stand in opposition, he whips out the Lieberman Card. “But Senator Leiberman agrees with me.” “Senator Leiberman loves with me.” “Senator Leiberman thinks my ass is tasty.”

Will: MoveOn.org. And stuff. Lieberman’s model on Vietnam…I mean Iraq…

Oopsie.

Cokie: Clinton Democrats are the middle. Clinton Democrats from the South are the middle. Or something. Everyone else is a damnyank who wants to despoil our Southron Womanhood. Or something.

Sam: WTF do you want the Dems to do? Say, “Hell, yes. We love this Preznit. We love the way he has shattered the world?”

Will: The political market is working in Connecticut. There was a huge, unfilled demand for an anti-war candidate.

Will: Abizaid represents the “Adult Supervision” on this war. He is getting us ready to get out. This war may get so bad so fast that we’ll be out before you know it.

Wow. George Will all but saying that we may be on the verge of a shoot-our-way-out meltdown in Iraq…and Cokie Roberts whinging like a gin-pickled Tory Blanche DuBois that not genuflecting and polishing Dubya’s knob is the height of some sort of narcissistic death wish for the Dems.

Looks like I picked a bad Sunday to stop sniffing glue.

Sam: The military knows the strategy is failing. They know this is a civil war. They knew that sectarian violence was going to boil over long ago. But they are not allowed to say this shit out loud. Rummy’d have their heads on pikes if the ever spoke the truth aloud.

They’re soldiers; their job is to button it, salute and follow orders. To expect them to revolt against the lawful civilian government it delusional and, long-term, would be a disastrous precedent. Which is why, like the long-dead art of Kremlinology, you have to know how to read between the lines.

What they are all saying – with its corners carefully shorn of any objectionable declarativeness -- is that the war is lost, we are screwed, and its time to hand the keys over to the Iraqi government and withdraw to a neutral corner.

Now.


On Meet the Press: Condi again. Same drivel.

And Lanny Davis (Joeista) and Jim Dean (Nedite) fight a proxy war on behalf of their boyz over the Connecticut. It was quite civil and sincere.

To bad we can’t have that every Sunday.

The long version, Condi spends about a half an hour blowing smoke up Russert’s south forty and lying.

That’s pretty much it. Straight up “Mark to Market” bullshit.

Everyone else in the Universe except me and my Sekrit Husband is right. No matter how horrifically bad things clearly are, and no matter how many critics from within our own military and former Bush aparats are now, finally, speaking out, if you amortize the cost of this war into the 23rd Century it’ll be fucking Candyland in Iraq.

Eventually.


Condi: Sure everyone is saying we’re fucked. Everyone – even former military, and former Bush Admin officials – says were completely foricateverted. That if you used a particle accelerator and flang a bah-gina and a manroot at one another -- each traveling at +99.9% the speed of light -- at the moment of impact you could not exceed the level of hardfucked we are in Iraq.

But you know, Tim, the Chinese have a character that’s crisis, within opportunity, within a nice brisket, within a bottle of Cristal. Sort of an “Opportunity Tur-Duck-En” if you will.

Sure it looks like we have kicked in a wasps nest, smeared our troops with Purina Wasp Chow. Sure it looks like we’re trying to put out a truck fire with napalm.
But...

Condi: It is a FAR BETTER Iraq today than it was when they used oppression to deal with internal problems.

Condi: But one day, in the far Futurama, when we are thawed out and continue this conversation, we will be proven right and all you nattering critics will be proven wrong.

Condi: The Iraqi Gummit is a Unity government. Sure they’re young ‘n feisty. Real young. Snowflake Baby young. But get back to me in 400 or 500 years (or 3-4 trillion friedmans), and then we’ll talk!

Chris Matthews – was interesting. Basically this what it looks like when the Pundit Neocon Ice Shelf begins to melt, and the big, booming, canyon-sized cracks begin to pop.

Which is why David Brooks spent most of the show examining the shiny tips of his pointy shoes veeeery carefully.