The Petraeus Report & Other Farces

well, september is here... and that can mean only three things:

1) football season begins and my sundays are booked.

2) the rest of the country is getting cooler and i just have to sit and wait.

3) the long fabled petraeus report has finally been delivered to congress.

yes, my lovelies, general david petraeus has sat before congress and the world and delivered the bush address. i'm sorry - his address. any surprises........?

ummmmmm............. no, not really.

the real fireworks seemed to revolve around a moveon.org ad appearing in the new york times. titled "general petraeus or general betray us? cooking the books for the white house" - the article tears apart the tiny stitches that barely hold together the bush administration's assertions on the success of the surge.

yes, the good general said everything the white house wanted him to say about the drop in violence and blah, blah, blah.... but what numbers are we really looking at?

let's go down the list here (and i freely admit that i'm borrowing heavily from moveon.org, but they have links to back up their statements so go to http://pol.moveon.org/petraeus.html).

most every independent report from the gao report to the nie states that the situation in iraq and the surge have failed. but the numbers out of the white house are all based on some fuzzy math that the times reports come out of some odd thought process used by the pentagon to bend the facts to their needs. (wow - there's a new strategy for the bush administration.)

examples: deaths by car bombs don’t count. ummm...really? the washington post reports that assassinations only count if a person is shot in the back of the head...not the front. sorry....... i guess maybe those are executions?

and all this talk of a decrease in violence in certain neighborhoods has only come around because they have been ethnically cleansed. it's easy to end sectarian violence when one sect has obliterated another sect from their territory.

abercrombie vs. ros-lehtinen

there was a fabulous moment during the hearings on monday when rep. ileana ros-lehtinen (r-florida) tried to get democrats on the committee to use part of their q&a time to "disassociate themselves" from the moveon.org piece.

rep. neil abercrombie (d-hawaii) shot back: "point of order. nobody has to distance themselves from something they weren't associated with."

as politico reports: ros-lehtinen glared at her democratic colleague, sitting on the other end of the top dais. "take it easy," the florida republican muttered.

"i don't know, actually"

the most telling moment on tuesday came when retiring senator john warner (r-virginia) asked petraeus about the effects of the iraq war on america at home and whether or not it was making us safer.

"sir, i believe that this is indeed the best course of action to achieve our objectives in iraq," the good general recited.

"does that make america safer?" warner asked again.

answered petraeus: "sir, i don't know, actually."

wow.... wow! as howard fineman of newsweek said "if he could've said it, he would've said it. the fact that he didn't say it...is absolutely stunning." clearly, if petraeus thought is was making us safer, he would have said "yes." but he knew he couldn't.....

so what are we fighting for? chris matthews made a wonderful point this evening that the president keeps arguing that we must fight because our soldiers are there... "but what is often overlooked is that they're there on orders."

so soldiers are over there dying and it's not even to make us safer here at home. how can the president even defend his "dead certain" stance on the war?

well, that brings us to our next farce.......

the idiot speaks

yes.....bush addressed the nation in primetime tonight for the 8th time since the invasion of iraq. his opening remark: "in iraq, an ally of the united states is fighting for its survival." and then it went on for another 17 minutes and 20 seconds of very short, choppy sentences. easy enough for bush to recite and understand.

and since when were any of these guys are allies? does anybody over there really want us there anymore?

there was a lot about anbar, anbar, anbar. apparently, iraqis no longer need to fear beheading for supporting the united states. no - they only get blown to bits like the sheik that was assassinated earlier today. yeah.....he was one of the top tribal supporters of bush during his visit. sure...bring that up. great way to win an argument W.

and apparently we've done away with the lines of "it'll be a cakewalk" and "as the iraqis stand up, america will stand down." oh, and the line made famous by the prince of darkness: "we're in the final stages of the insurgency."

no..... now we have "return on success." the more we succeed in iraq, the more american troops will be able to return home. so.....to clarify: the more we succeed? not the more the iraqis succeed?

but don't think the ole decider didn't have a ray of sunshine for all of us. petraeus has assured him that we can maintain the current security in iraq with less troops. so bush has announced troops will be coming home!

5,700 troops by christmas. another 21,000 troops by next july.

but wait a minute.... as norah o'donnell points out: the return of those troops is already scheduled as part of a normal troop rotation. and even with those troops out of iraq, there will still be 12,000 more troops in iraq than there were before the surge.

fuzzy math.........

for the record

bush made his first reference to 9/11 about 13 minutes into the speech. probably a record.

15 minutes into the 17 minute speech, bush mentioned "reconciliation." the argument for the surge was to give more time (breathing room) for the iraqis to reach a political reconciliation. good to know it still ranks so high in the argument.

the vitter farce - or - how he likes it

yes....that ole hooker-lovin' david vitter is back in the news. apparently, he was playing patty-cakes with a nola prostitute several times a week over a period of several months. so far... no calles from the hill for senator vitter (r-louisiana) to step down.

meanwhile....senator larry "happy feet" criag (r-idaho) continues his slow march into infamy.

it just goes to show.... if you're gonna fuck up as a republican - fuck up with a woman.

meet the press quote of the week

this one was hard.... i have two i like so much but i swore i would only do one. well.... maybe i'll do one now and save the other one for another day.

this week's quote comes from that ole pistol, senator joe biden - democrat of delaware and presidential candidate. and really - it ties into our whole discussion on W and iraq and his total ass-raping of the situation:

"this president has no plan how to win and/or how to leave. all he's doing is putting american forces in the middle of a civil war to maintain the status quo. that is unconscionable and he's wrong."

biden for secretary of state '08.

e.