Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

Part Two of Two


Wherein Meet the Press continues with episode number 12,322 of Old Conservative White Guys talking reverently about Dead Conservative White Guys.

This Very Special Episode featured Punkin’ Haid Russert reading extended homilies from the Reagan Hymnal while Michael Deaver, Ed Meese and Douglas Brinkley daven freakishly as they uncritically celebrate all things Reagan (including Goodwife Nancy, who was a helpmate that never, ever got involved in policy) and reverentially intoned “The Gipper” in the round:

Gipper! Gipper! burning bright
In the pea brains of the Right,
What clever spinners of wingnut lie
Could’ve made up this Reagan Guy?

What perversion of Jesus gone awry
Burnt the fire of thine eye?
On Falwell’s wings he did aspire.
With Klansmen’s help he seized the fire.

…

Reagan! Reagan! burning still
In the heart of every wingnut shill,
What immoral Rightwing ho’
Will run as Reagan 2.0?

Brinkley: It was almost mystical. The way he didn’t wear his good watch the day he was shot.

Deaver: He missed his wife. He missed going to church.

Meese: On the third day he arose from the dead and kicked Stalin’s ass!

Russert: His continual references to God are giving me a pleasant erection.

Brinkley: His diaries prove that was greater than even the greaty greatness that we knew about.

Russert: Rushmore is not big enough to frame his vastness. Perhaps we can reshape the coastline of South America...

...to better give God and passing space aliens a good look at the profile of the greatest human being who ever lived.

Meese: He had an almost photographic memory. So if you fed him too many facts he would get confused. It was better when he was “natural”

Helpful driftglass translation: Reagan was at his best when he was free to just make shit up out of thin air to “prove” his point.

From the Reagan Diaries: The media are bastards for giving me shit over visiting an SS cemetery. Fuck them.

From the Reagan Diaries: The press sucks. They are all evil, backstabbing Commies.

Russert: Sounds like he doesn’t like the press.

Deaver: He liked people. He got mad when they got the facts wrong from is point of view. (

Helpful driftglass translation: Reagan got cranky and confused when the press called him out on the shit he made up out of thin air. Fortunately for him, the 80’s saw the extinction of anything resembling an aggressive, civic-minded press national corps and heralded the Rise of the Deferential Broderites.

Record deficit maker.

Union buster.

Arch polluter.

Maker of savage war on the poor.

Maker of tiny, boutique, media-friendly shooting wars on wee nations.

Enabler of Falwell, Schlafly and the entire degenerate Christopath Right.

Killer of the Fairness Doctrine.

King of the Southern Strategy and friend to Segregationists everywhere.

Treater with terrorist regimes for political gain.

Trader of weapons to terrorists for hostages.

Funder of a wholly illegal war.

He who stranded 700 Marines to die in an indefensible position as surely as if they had been goats staked out as lion-bait at a watering hole.

The first President to lose an entire spacecraft – the flagship of the American space fleet -- and every soul aboard because his people wanted it launched to meet political timetables.

But hey, nice hair, quick with a joke and could well up a tear up on cue.

Russert: Just the sound of his name makes my Falklands tingle and my Tierra del Reagan throb.

Gotta love that Liberal Media Bias.


Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer. Senator Arlen Specter, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Fred Kagan, discredited Neocon military historian and retired General Paul Eaton.

On the DOJ

Feinstein: The DOJ is in the toilet.

Specter: Gonzo is not credible, and the Comey testimony about trying to force a sick man on his hospital bed to sign off on their illegal shit was striking.


On the upcoming No Confidence vote:

Specter: It is a very forceful, historical statement. I would think Gonzo would like to avoid having it on his resume.


Schieffer: So you won’t call for Gonzo’s resignation, but you will say that he in an incompetent pinhead who – like Brownie, and Bremmer, and Rummy (Oh my!) has ruined his department, and that the nation would be better of with him quitting and opening up an internet café somewhere,

Specter: I don’t want to tell the Preznit what to do, This is his decision.

The immigration debate here was relatively calm and thoughtful. Seriously, if you watch any of the Sunday Mouse Circus, Face the Nation is a good choice, proving that it is possible to have a mature conversation about vital issues without George Will or Brit Hume or Bill Kristol or Tim Russert butt-scooting their stank all over it.

Paul Eaton and the long-ago-thoroughly-discredited-Iraq-war-proponent Fred Kagan (American Enterprise Institute)

Kagan: The enemy is heinous! This is war! There are more markets open! More Freedom Rugs!

Eaton: The “surge” is really just a modest reinforcement. This Administration has not grown the military. And this President doesn’t “surge” diplomatic or economic.

Kagan: We need to grow the Iraqi Army and arm them. They’re very impressive…all 14 of them.

Funny how I can remember the Presidential Debates of 2004 (going on three years ago now) where Dubya flatly and smirkily asserted that we had already trained hundreds of thousands of police and military.

That they were all doing their final calf and ham stretches just before they were gonna stand up, and we were gonna bow out.

It went a little something like this…

On September 30, 2004

Dubya:

Of course we're after Saddam Hussein -- I mean bin Laden.
...

We will succeed. We've got a plan to do so. And the main reason we'll succeed is because the Iraqis want to be free.

I had the honor of visiting with Prime Minister Allawi. He's a strong, courageous leader. He believes in the freedom of the Iraqi people.

He doesn't want U.S. leadership, however, to send mixed signals, to not stand with the Iraqi people.

He believes, like I believe, that the Iraqis are ready to fight for their own freedom. They just need the help to be trained. There will be elections in January. We're spending reconstruction money. And our alliance is strong.

That's the plan for victory.

And when Iraq is free, America will be more secure.

…

Eerily familiar question for Dubya:

What criteria would you use to determine when to start bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq?

Eerily familiar bullshit answer from Dubya:

Let me first tell you that the best way for Iraq to be safe and secure is for Iraqi citizens to be trained to do the job.

And that's what we're doing. We've got 100,000 trained now, 125,000 by the end of this year, 200,000 by the end of next year. That is the best way. We'll never succeed in Iraq if the Iraqi citizens do not want to take matters into their own hands to protect themselves. I believe they want to. Prime Minister Allawi believes they want to.

And so the best indication about when we can bring our troops home -- which I really want to do, but I don't want to do so for the sake of bringing them home; I want to do so because we've achieved an objective -- is to see the Iraqis perform and to see the Iraqis step up and take responsibility.

…

Prime Minister Who?


Dubya:

There are 100,000 troops trained, police, guard, special units, border patrol. There's going to be 125,000 trained by the end of this year. Yes, we're getting the job done. It's hard work. Everybody knows it's hard work, because there's a determined enemy that's trying to defeat us.

---

Then again, on October 14, 2004


Dubya:

The best way to take the pressure off our troops is to succeed in Iraq, is to train Iraqis so they can do the hard work of democracy, is to give them a chance to defend their country, which is precisely what we're doing. We'll have 125,000 troops trained by the end of this year.

And yet, on Meet the Press this very day…

MR. RUSSERT: Another, I think, concern Americans have is that four years into the war, there are only 6,000 Iraqi troops...

MR. GINGRICH: Ready to fight.

MR. RUSSERT: ...who are fully trained...

MR. GINGRICH: Yeah.

MR. RUSSERT: ...independent outside of American support. And people question why is that? Why are the Iraqis apparently unwilling to step up and shed blood...

Of course Newt goes onto assert that there are many more Iraqi troops – over 100,000 – who can basically do ride-alongs with the Americans but cannot or will not fight without us.

In other words, however many other troops there are in theory, unless that are the Standee-Upee kind, who give a shit?

So let’s be very, very clear about this.

Almost three years ago, the Dear Leader swore that there would be 125,000 troops trained by the end of that year, or almost exactly the number as we allegedly have trained now.

Iraqi troops which, whatever their virtues, almost three years later are unable to “Stand Up” so we can “Stand Down”.

At the same time, the Dear Leader swore that there would be 200,000 troops trained by the end of 2005. It is now nearing the middle of 2007 and we have nowhere near that number trained, and only 6,000 trained well enough to allow them to relieve our men and women serving in Iraq.

In other words, when you factor out the myriad lies the President has told this country about what is really going on in Iraq (difficult I know because of their sheer number), it has taken us four years to train a cadre of 6,000 Iraqi troops capable of standing up on their own and therefore, theoretically, allowing a like number of American troops to stand down.

The current troops level in Iraq is around 160,000 – far short of what any rational person is willing to argue is necessary, but you defend the Dear Leader’s catastrophes with the army you have left, and not the army you would have had, had the Dear Leader not crippled it.

So it took four years to train 6,000 Iraqi Stand Up Troops. Well, presumably we’re getting better at it, so lets be extra generous and say that it will only take two years to train the next cadre of 6,000 Stand Ups.

And two years to train the next.

Which means that we will be able to completely replace our 160,000 troop military footprint in Iraq with Stand Up Iraqi troops in approximately 2060.

53 years from now.

Or right about when the Neocon Theory of History predicts future generations will finally come around to recognizing George W. Bush as a Foreign Policy Jeenyus! and the Greatest Preznit Evah!

End part Two of Two