In which Senator Brownstain explains that the Iraqi Elections were exactly like the American Presidential Elections of 1992 and 1996; when the results don’t turn out the way Republicans want, they feel no obligation to respect them.
The Republican Party: Making their contempt for democracy our leading export since 2002.
On This Week with George Stephanopoulos…King Abdullah II of Jordan, followed by Dick Durbin and Sam Brownback.
Durbin (who will be the majority whip): Remember we are dealing with the worst foreign policy failure since Vietnam. This is going to be difficult and there are no good answers left.
Brownback (who really wants to be President, and thinks he can get the Good Hair Wingnut wing of the Party to back him now that Felix Allen and Little Ricky Santorum have been politically remaindered): We cannot face the public in 2008 with this situation unchanged (or I will never see the inside of the White House except by invitation from President Obama.) We need to push the Iraqi government to do this, and push 'em to do that.
driftglass: Push them how, asshole? With what?
George: And if Prime Minister al-Maliki simply can’t deliver what we need him to do…?
Brownhack: Well then we may have to go around the al-Maliki government in some cases. (Aside: Look for "regionalism" to be the Magic Word for the next 4-6 weeks.) If we need to separate ourselves from the current Iraqi government, so be it. Need to push a reconciliation between Shia and Sunni, but I don’t agree with all the premises in the [Chuck Hagel] article.
For context, the Hagel article (from the WaPo here) says, in part,
There will be no victory or defeat for the United States in Iraq. These terms do not reflect the reality of what is going to happen there. The future of Iraq was always going to be determined by the Iraqis -- not the Americans.
...
There will be no military victory or military solution for Iraq. Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger made this point last weekend.
The time for more U.S. troops in Iraq has passed. We do not have more troops to send and, even if we did, they would not bring a resolution to Iraq. Militaries are built to fight and win wars, not bind together failing nations. We are once again learning a very hard lesson in foreign affairs: America cannot impose a democracy on any nation -- regardless of our noble purpose.
...
We are destroying our force structure, which took 30 years to build. We've been funding this war dishonestly, mainly through supplemental appropriations, which minimizes responsible congressional oversight and allows the administration to duck tough questions in defending its policies. Congress has abdicated its oversight responsibility in the past four years.
It is not too late. The United States can still extricate itself honorably from an impending disaster in Iraq.
...
driftglass: Really? Push around the elected Iraqi government? Bypass the elected Iraqi government? Dude! What about the Purple Fingers, dude! What about this freely elected government that we created? What about the corner we were turning three or four whole friedmans ago? The election of this our Third Iraqi Puppet Government was gonna be the moment when the Dear Leader could finally bring the codpiece and “Mission Accomplished” banner out of mothballs.
But now, Republican Senator Sam Brownback says, "Fuck all that!"
Wheeeee!
So I guess we can all look forward to reports that Prime Minister al-Maliki had his best friend murdered to cover up his wife’s lesbian affairs as Matt Drudge, Newt Gingrich, Linda Tripp and Ken Starr get the band back together and take their Impeachment Hellwagon on the road to the Green Zone.
Let’s hope it’s very lightly armored.
Stephanopoulos jumps to the issue of judicial appointments by bringing up the case of Michigan Court of Appeals Judge Janet T. Neff. Brownback has a hold on this qualified nominee solely because…
Stephanopoulos: Why should attending a Commitment Ceremony of a next-door-neighbor disqualify someone from serving on the federal bench.
Brownback: It’s more about how she would review the law on same-sex marriage. This may be an indicator of how she will think about that issue.
Bullshit. The GOP is populated -- from pulpit to podium to Karl Rove and Dick Cheney's family tree -- by legions of gays and lesbians -- many self-loathing and closeted. So if mere amicable proximity to queerness is some disqualifier to public service, by that logic the entire Party of Lincoln needs to be shot into space to keep their gay-friendly hands off the tiller of the Ship of State.
And yet candidates of this Gay Old Party know they cannot get elected without making their ritual gay-bashing sacrifices at the Altar of Dobson, which is why the Modern Republican Party cannot change.
For them it’ll be Guns, God and Gays until the last of them is burned like a tick off of Lady Liberty’s ass, and if you think for one moment they’re going to come over all “reasonable”, you’re nuts. They rose to power on the scaffolding built for them by James Dobson, Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich. On Hate, Lies and the incubus energy of their ignorant Christopath army.
Without a shrill Culture War, they have nothing to run on.
Nothing at all.
On Meet the Press with Tim Russert…with Arnold Schwarzenegger followed by Duncan Hunter, Ike Skelton, Barry McCaffrey and Wayne Downing.
The inimitable Atrios sums it up with “heh indeedy” brevity here.
In For Another Friedman
On Meet the Press, General McCaffrey informed us that the next 4 to 6 months are crucial.
...he was on Meet the Press last on June 11. Here's what he said then:MR. RUSSERT: The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Khalilzad, had this to say to Der Spiegel magazine in Germany. "The next six months will be critical in terms of reining in the danger of civil war. If the government fails to achieve this, it will have lost its opportunity."
GEN. McCAFFREY: Yeah, well, thank God we've got that ambassador on the ground. He's going to be a huge part of our ability to coach this new emerging legitimate Iraqi government to achieve some...
MR. RUSSERT: But General, he seems to be saying that by the end of this year...
GEN. McCAFFREY: Yeah. I think so.
MR. RUSSERT: ...if we have not gotten control of this civil war, the Iraqi government will have lost its opportunity.
GEN. McCAFFREY: Yeah. I think between now and Christmas is the crucial time.
The endless cycle of Friedmans cannot be broken.
But for me, the Money Quote came in this exchange between Punkin Haid and
Russert: You [Duncan Hunter] said in March when this war started that we would win this thing overwhelmingly. In hindsight, weren’t you were wildly over-optimistic.
Hunter: No. We will win this completely. It’s just like the Cold War. People were preaching doom and gloom then, but we eventually beat the Soviets. We will do so here too.
What can one say about such a complete, psychotic detachment from the real world other that, if you voted for Hunter, Jee-zus. What you should feel is so far beyond shame I can’t cook up a word for it.
The Chris Matthews Show…is so incestuously pathetic.
We have a historic election a mere coupla weeks ago. War and Peace are in the balance. Huge crises rising up on the horizon.
So what are the Beltway Kewl Kids talking about?
Matthews dumps an entire drawer-full of panties on the floor and they spend the first half of this Mouse Circus sideshow sniffing and barking and tumbling over each other to opine about…
Edwards and McCain in ‘08.
McCain and Hillary in ‘08.
McCain and Obama in ‘08.
Obama and Edwards in ‘08.
Journalists? Are you kidding? This bunch of paunchy high school girls, giggly drunk on Dad’s Cherry Kijafa playing presidential spin-the-bottle and making their fantasy Rotisserie League prom king/prom queen matches at the slumber party?
From whom we learn that Dems are now divided between the “gut-players” and the “hand-wringers”.
Lotta talk about “guts” at the slumber party.
The MSNBC Cylon Model “Noron” sez: The problem for the Democrats is… They will make themselves look weak on national security…
She speaks thusly because the Norons of the world cannot exist in a Universe where the Rovian Fictions on which they feed are shown decisively to be ridiculous. Where perennially weakling Dems aren’t on the verge of implosion. Where the unstoppably popular legions of GOP orcs aren’t marching forever from victory to victory.
So they just jettison Reality altogether and keep reporting as if the smelly little Miniverse inside Rove’s Head was the Really, Really Real.
Because no matter what happens, no matter how much of a beat-down the ’06 election was, no matter how catastrophically wrong the GOP has proven to be about Every. Fucking. Thing…
No matter that the billion-dollar war will now cost 1,000-2,000 times that…
No matter that our cakewalk war has radically destabilized 1/5th of the Earth…
Now matter that the flowers and sweets turned out to be IEDs and car bombs…
No matter that the innocent dead pile up as fast as the criminal debt…
No matter that the war profiteering Friends of Cheney – the No-Bid Kids – have fattened themselves on the honorable dead…
No matter that it was all based on Republican lies and Republican treachery, now finally and decisively repudiated by the voters…
No matter any of this, because the Beltway Kewl Kids know these things to be true.
Before they are even sworn in, Democrats are weak.
Before they have even caucused, Democrats are on the verge of falling apart.
Before they have taken a single vote on anything, Democrats are dangerously out of the mainstream.
Also don't forget that the election is in the bag and Karl Rove is a fucking G-E-N-I-U-S. I’m worried people.
And I've gotta go.
They've got curling on NBC!
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