Tanbark -- longtime Gilliardian and friend of this blog – left these comments down below.
They need more daylight than that.
Ivory Bill; good points. I would add that the answer to Drift's question also involves the simple truth that we are not going to get out of this shit with our "way of life" intact.
The savage idiocy of what bush and his cronies have done is going to hurt, economically, and in terms of our lost power and influence in the mid-east.
Not to mention that this misery has exponentially increased the number of fanatics who want a piece of us.
The assholes who created this lashup are trying to put us on a permanent war-footing, a la Orwell, in "1984".
I don't think they can succeed. A friend of mine keeps saying that we're gonna do Iran. We SHOULD be paranoid, but I don't think that a president whose own party is beginning to discuss his impeachment, has the leeway to start a regional war, in which to enfold and perpetuate the one which has already proved to be a fuckup of Himalayan proportions.
Also, our military, or that portion of it which is on the ground, have no interest in finding out how 15 million Iraqi Shia will react, if goatboy starts bombing Iranian Shia, and they are growing cojones, as we speak.
I think that one of the things which is paralyzing the democrats in congress, and doing the same to a lot of voters, is the gut realization that with this one, we're not going to be able to just pull out, and chalk up one agrarian Marxist regime. (Which we could have had WITHOUT spending those 60K american lives and a million-plus Vietnamese)
For this little kneejerk dick-hardener, we are going to be paying for a long time to come.
I say again, if the democrats are stupid enough to find some way to unilaterally force troop drawdowns on bush, it will be worth 20-25 percentage points to the repubs in the coming election. It will be a wet-dream come true for Karl Rove.
Our outrage and anger, and our desire to at least do something to try to end our part in this (we cannot "end it"; that's a fantasy.) is understandable, but as cynical as it is to say it, the blame game is THE game in town, and we better play it, and play it well, in the 16 months between now and the election.
If we keep the pressure on the petro-turds who CREATED this, by reminding the voters that it was they who started it, and that bush can begin bringing our troops home with the STROKE OF HIS PEN; no dickering; no vote-trading; no "bi-artisanship" required, and if we keep the committees going after the bastards, then we have a good chance to take everything except the court. That's going to be bush's "alpine redoubt", and we can go after him there, and by then, who knows what the right-wingers on there will be thinking, and how they will vote, if it comes down to some constitutional point to impeach or not impeach?
As I said, someone over at FDL posted that "time is not on our side". He was so wrong, I didn't even reply to it.
BTW, Cee:
Allawi!???
These crazed, demented, fuckheads still have chips riding on CHALABI!!!
There is practically no human being of whom I actively wish for his death, but with THAT fucker, if some insurgent group catches him and dresses him out like an 8 point buck it will not bother me a whit.
Or, even better, if they freeze-dry his ass and stand him up in someone's living room like a cigar-store Indian, I would pay good money for a poster of it.
12 comments:
Tanbarrrrrrk!!!
You rock dude! You're one truth tellin' mofo, hon. I'm catchin' up from my week in Seattle and I come here to see Sir Driftglass has front-paged you! Glad to see this! Excellent stuff my dear friend ;-)
Drifty rocks! Great graphic :D
Pithy and to the point as always Tanbark!
The assholes who created this lashup are trying to put us on a permanent war-footing, a la Orwell, in "1984".
What with the Cold War and now this wonderful little Global War on Turds, I'd say that the US has pretty much been on a war footing since just before WWII with rearmament under Roosevelt. Pump priming gone mad for well over sixty years. Talk about jobs for the boys............. and people wonder why the reporting of the journamalists of the MilitaryIndustrialMediaComplex is so slanted!!
........... that anon was me........
Tan you ignorant s**t . . . *G*
Folks, I'm the one Tan speaks of about MY fear of GoatChimpenF doing Iran.
Only, I've learned in the past 24 hours, that it APPEARS we are pulling our Carriers out of the Gulf, leaving only one at SOME point.
I COULD look at that as a tension releiver.
But, the Air Force has been Christenized, Fundie'd and wants some ACTION!!! And so, we see a rachet up of AF action in Iraq.
Do circumstances REALLY preclude BoyKing from pullin the plug on Iran?
I'm gonna go with what some folks posting at FDL suggest. Lord Putin handed GeorgieBoy his ass AND his intestines, and told him, if you even THINK of droppin in on Iran in any form, I'll launch on you directly.
I believe, the ONLY reason we are safe from a DO on Iran, is due to Putin. I really, really believe that.
And I believe the carrier situation changes, as sudden as the story changed in the news, and coming just AFTER Putin's VISIT to BoyKing Langley Land, are a result of Putin.
I rest MUCH calmer now. I only fear Cheney pulling a wabbit out of his ass and nuking Iran, or someone. He's a wild card, and MUCH more dangerous than the Prez. Hell, he could call BoyKing delusional at some point and be TRUE! Usurp the Presidency, and pull a Palace Coup.
My, but we live in interesting times.
But, Tanbark, my DEAR friend (said in his best Ambassador Molinari voice), I'm over the Iran thing, for now. For the most part. No, really. HONEST! I now fear . . . fill in the blanks!!!! lol
And, Tan good buddy, we only really disagree on ONE point an anything we've ever talked about, or that you posted above-
IT DON'T MATTER WHAT FLAVOR OWNS THE WH!!!
They are ALL reps of big biz, the MIC, sole source contracting for their pals, AIPAC, and Wall Street.
So, I say while we waste time NOT being militant enuff in the streets and boycotting media sponsors and conducting labor stoppages, the bad guys Pelosi, Shillary, et al are just buying time for good PR. But, they are as evil as the BoyKing.
YOU THINK THE NEXT DECADE OR TWO OF DEMS IN WH IS GONNA RECLAIM LOST CIVIL RIGHTS?
Or, reduce Executive Privilage?
NO!
And to continue to ALLOW the Pubs to own this war, or ANYTHING, is aiding and abetting the enemy hoss.
We need to incarcerate the Pub's NOW, get out of Iraq, screw the elections, and then, hound and harass the Dem's like we are harassig the GOP.
If we want our REPUBLIC back, that is.
Cuz, it's gone, long long gone like a bent Huber tone ring and a Pre War Neck from an old Gibby. (banjo reference for those now in the know).
Tan, may ALL our hubcaps shine and sing mightily for this Republic we have lost!!! *G*
Oh, and I forgot to add, we haven't EVEN heard from the Sleeping Tiger Delagation who hold a good part of our banking notes . . . *G*
Oh, and, Iran has told JAPAN, to pay for oil in YEN, not US Dollars . . . the vise is beginning to clamp.
And dang it, where ARE my manners??
Drifty, great postings in general, and GREAT pic of HST/Five Stirng . . . SUPERB!!!! *G*G*
Beauty, Tanbark. So about that blogging position we were discussing the other day... ;-)
I don't think that a president whose own party is beginning to discuss his impeachment, has the leeway to start a regional war
You mean leeway like the Senate passing a resolution regarding Iran's President inciting genocide? Or an amendment declaring Iran's official material support of terrorists/insurgents in Iraq? Leeway like the Senate swallowing the Cheney administration's baseless claims about Iranian clandestine nuclear weapons research (wording buried deep in this resolution)?
THAT kind of leeway? How about the kind of leeway afforded by there being NO effective opposition to any war rhetoric against Iran by any legislator or Presidential hopeful, but instead a chorus of clap-louder? Lonely Kucinich and Paul would hardly qualify as "effective".
Impeachment, shmimpeachment. It's all political haymaking; unrealisitc blathering and posturing. Even if it were all to somehow miraculously coalesce into action it would take what? 8? 10? 12 months at least? MAYBE? Right now no concerted groundwork is being laid for impeachment. But that resolution, amendment and what can only be described as willful gullibility regarding Iran's nuclear program are bona-fide bricks laid purposefully in the path to unilateral war against Iran. Throw in some carrier groups in the Gulf, Bush rather doggedly pushing hard for a missile defense shield based in Europe, Putin pulling Russia out of conventional arms deployment agreements in Europe (with likely an eye on those soon to be deployed missile shield assets), and you've got yourself a lovely little garden path to armeggedon.
Paranoid? If the Iraq Adventure had never occurred, sure. But this President has only failed upward. He has never reaped the consequences of his failings, Himalayan-sized or otherwise. A rational, responsible and conscientious adult/administration would take such a thing into account. Bush is none of that, and more than that his is a lame-duck Presidency. There is only "flucht nach vornes" for him and his neocon cabal.
Both impeachment and this war against Iran need a tipping point. I can opine with reasonable certainty, what with Pelosi declaring impeachment "off the table" and even Feingold not voting against that heinous resolution and amendment against Iran, that the tipping point for War is much closer, much more likely than the one for impeachment.
Get ready for the most interesting 12 months of your life, everybody. And not cum-stains paraded as high crimes interesting either.
Spark, the Lieberman Kabuki Acts of last week are about as meaningful as National Ice Cream Day -- especially since we're soon going to be down to two (or even one) carrier in the Gulf for the rest of the year. Bush really can't mount an attack on Iran with anything less than three carrier groups.
I appreciate your optimism, anonymous, but everyone now knows "You don't roll out a new product in August", am I right? Carrier groups come, carrier groups go, but tactically nuking is still very much "on the table".
Kabuki or not, what it definitely can be now construed as is legal casus belli, and history proves this is only one of the many dirty tricks a craven administration or their lackeys or hangers-on can resort to if they want a war bad enough. Wanting a war badly is exactly the point, because I'm hearing precious little from any corner save Kucinich and Paul about explicitly NOT wanting such an utterly insane war. USA is a Republic in name only. Neocon or neolib; no difference when it comes to imperialist wont.
I stand by my 12 months. If we can make it past this time next year we're as likely as not to be clear this madness, but I don't hold much hope.
...an afterthought, FWIW
Bush really can't mount an attack on Iran with anything less than three carrier groups.
...and Iraq can't be secured post-invasion without 450,000 troops on the ground. Since when has military realities ever dinted this President's stategeries?
I'm kind of overwhelmed here with all the kind words.
(Could I get y'all to talk to my ex? )
Only kidding. :o)
To have Drift shout me a free one in his fine watering-hole-cum-laser-pit is, heart-warming to say the least.
From the first day he got onto Steve and Jen's place (I was there! :o) ) and started shredding winger ass like it was Rachel Raye with a stick of Monterey Jack cheese, the man has been a treasure.
That rare combination of a bright, bright, mind; a good, unfettered, heart; and a way with words that sometimes, literally takes my breath away.
(He's obviously done photoshoppe once before, too...:O)
What an image. Fire MY bluegrass ass up! I got out the pre-war re-issue flathead and worked on "John Henry", etc., for an hour. :o) )
But, the fact is, we're ALL getting to the point where we feel like going out and biting the heads off some chickens.
It's making us testy, even with each other. (Sorry to the guys at The Group News Blog; you're off to a good start, and I will be more patient...I think...)
For my little 2c, I defended Pelosi and the dems some, when there was something of a firestorm on her/them, a while back when they didn't pull the funding, and I still think that would have been, and would be, a mistake, if they don't wait for events (and the numbers of americans getting seriously pissed) to scare the repubs; THE PEOPLE WHO ALMOST UNANIMOUSLY CREATED THIS NIGHTMARE, into joining them.
And then I caught that YouTube clip of Pelosi on Charley Rose, and 'scuse my sexism, but it was like sitting in a Norfolk bar while right beside me, a hooker and a swabbie on liberty, were cutting the deal. She was nauseating, for what she DIDN'T say.
I swear, if I hear ONE more talking-head point out to some influential democrat that if we pull out it's going to be the pure shits, short AND long-term, and the democrat does NOT fire back with:
"Yeah, Charley. That's what we were warning they AND you about, nearly 5 years ago, when you guys were manning the koolaid stand for bush and his foreign-policy wizards.
That's what ANTHONY-FUCKING-ZINNI was warning you about, as he took time out from his staunch- conservative;-decorated-and-wounded-combat-vet-former-commandant-of-the-USMC librul duties of licking Jane Fonda's bicycle seat, to tell anyone who would listen, that bush was getting ready to lift the lid on one FUCK of a Pandora's Box and that he wouldn't be able to put the lid back on...
I want, and WE DESERVE:
"Righto, Chuckie-poo! And which current occupant of the White House, and which of the two political parties, worked like navvies; like a bunch of world-class coprophiliac children sculpting "intelligence" turds out of their own waste, to GIVE us this bloody, insane, "Hobson's Choice"?
"And here's a hint, you miserable shit-eating dog, you! It was the same fucking people who NOW refuse to do a goddamn MEANINGFUL thing to help us start bringing our troops home, and to let the people in what-used-to-be-Iraq (before bush, with YOUR help, flayed and scourged it into the hellhole that we're looking at today) decide what they want to do with their former country."
If I don't start hearing THIS from the Sunday line-up democrats, I am going to hurl vile, half-digested, chunks so copiously that Linda Blair will blush with shame and envy.
To Charley and the rest of the "We KNEW which questions NOT to ask" assholes:
It's true that we have to look ahead, to try to salvage SOMETHING out of this Alice-In-BodypartsLand soiree, but Godddamn you, don't you infer, hint, or in any way, shape, or form, suggest that gosharootie, it just descended on us in a shower of golden urine-rain.
This was the work of the people occupying the white house, and that "occupation", just like the one in Iraq, can be ended any time that enough americans choose to do it. How's about you and Ms. Pelosi, and the rest of the democrats start helping us get to it, at least by stating accurately, how we got from there to here? Trust me, the words will taste better than the stale bushCo dogturds on which you are so dutifully still chomping."
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