BottleOfBlog

Bushed

I'm beat.  Been blogging too long.  I need a break before the next stupid war.  But if you're hungry for news:

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A suicide bomber attacked the entrance to the main U.S. military base in Afghanistan Tuesday during a visit by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, killing up to 23 people and wounding 20 more...

"I heard a loud boom," Cheney told reporters. "So, naturally, I just assumed I shot somebody in the face."

I'm going to go dogear my thesaurus right around "incompetent", "corrupt", "dishonest", and "dangerous".

Then, I'll be right back.

Everything New Is Old Again

WASHINGTON -- House Democrats, taking charge of investigations now that they control Congress, grilled the former U.S. occupation chief in Iraq on Tuesday about the way he doled out billions of Iraqi dollars without accounting for the money…

The significance of the House hearing came when Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman and America's Greatest Congressman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., promised two years of investigations of fraud, waste and abuse on the Bush administration's watch…

Waxman and a hearing witness, special inspector general for Iraq Stuart Bowen Jr., criticized Bremer for failing to install accounting systems that would have forced Iraqi ministries to account for up to $12 billion in Iraq's funds. The money came from a United Nations Oil For Food program and seized Iraqi assets, but fell under Bremer's control…

Former committee chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., now the senior minority member, defended Bremer and criticized Waxman.

He said Waxman was rushing to "old judgments" in a hearing that was "old news."

Har!

"Old news"?  Why does that sound familiar to me?

It seems like just about everything is "old news" these days, except for when it was "new" news.  When it was new news, it was denied, disputed, and ridiculed. 

New revelations about Bush's drunk driving?

Bush, who said repeatedly that it was odd the event is being publicized with only four days remaining until the election, ended the press conference asserting, "I've got my suspicions [on where the information came from]…"

Bruce Buchanan, a UT government professor, said that at the end of a close race, it's typical to bring up information that may be embarrassing to a candidate.

He added that the information is old news.

Insider trading?

In his press conference this week, Bush called the Harken charges old news…

Going AWOL in a time of war?

But those who expected the Bush Guard story to reorder the presidential standings were not just misjudging the media bounce. They were also wrong about the impact of the issue itself.

President Bush is not likely to suffer significantly from revelations about his irresponsible early 20s for several reasons. First, it is all old news...

Your uncle bribing Noriega to conduct "bidness" a couple of years before your father overthrows him?  Your uncle skirting U.S. sanctions and providing communication satellites to China?

Bush declines to discuss those controversies. "That's old   news. It's in the past," he says.

Lie about links between Saddam and al-Qaeda?

The partial release of the report came after nearly three years of partisan wrangling over what is to be a five-chapter analysis of the use of prewar intelligence in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The heart of the report -- a detailed comparison of administration statements with the intelligence then available -- is far from release. But the committee voted Thursday to release two chapters, one on the role that Iraqi exiles played in shaping prewar intelligence, the other on the accuracy of the prewar analyses of Hussein's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons capabilities and his suspected links to al-Qaeda and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

White House spokesman Tony Snow dismissed the findings as old news.

Embrace the nuttiest people in the world?

WASHINGTON, Aug. 2 - A sharp debate between scientists and religious conservatives escalated Tuesday over comments by President Bush that the theory of intelligent design should be taught with evolution in the nation's public schools…

On Tuesday, the president's conservative Christian supporters and the leading institute advancing intelligent design embraced Mr. Bush's comments while scientists and advocates of the separation of church and state disparaged them. At the White House, where intelligent design has been discussed in a weekly Bible study group, Mr. Bush's science adviser, John H. Marburger 3rd, sought to play down the president's remarks as common sense and old news.

Lie to the American people about WMDs in Iraq?

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The White House on Wednesday reacted angrily to a report that President Bush had cited trailers suspected as biological weapons labs as proof of the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after intelligence officials knew that the trailers were not part of a WMD program…

McClellan said the rehashing of the information is old news.

Your own military calls for the resignation of the Secretary of Defense?

(CNN) -- An editorial to be published in a major military publication Monday calls for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's replacement.

And the Pentagon is countering by saying the new "chorus of criticism" is "old news."

Tell the British that you're actually planning to lie the American people into a war?

Old news.

Wake up, confused, hungover, and covered in blood next to a dead hooker?

On July 28, 1986, George W. Bush woke up with a hangover. It had been a loud, liquid night at the venerable Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs as he and friends from Texas celebrated their collective 40th birthdays…

That July day, Bush officially swore off alcohol.

Old news.

And that is the way it's done.  Suppress evidence, lie about it, dispute the facts, obstruct any investigation into the facts and, then, years later, when indisputable evidence of what you've been denying and supressing and hiding finally proves not only the original damning allegations but also that you've been lying about it for years, dismiss the whole thing as "old news".

And it always works.

Unless you're a Democrat.  Then, like thirty year real estate deals in which you actually lost money require  four year long, twenty four hour a day scrutiny.  By three independant prosecutors.  The House.  And the Senate.

Did our "liberal" media really bring down Nixon?

I was pretty young so I don't really remember it too clearly.  But if things then were anything like they are now, there is no way you can convince me that Nixon's downfall was anything except political suicide.

I mean, really, that Watergate shit?  By 1974?  It was old news, man.  Old news.

Plus, She Probably Blew The President!

This is, frankly, almost impossible for my unvindicated mind to wrap itself around:

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 — For six years, first as national security adviser and then as secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice worked under the cover of a very effective shield: Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who was the administration’s lightning rod for criticism over its handling of Iraq.

But in recent weeks, with Mr. Rumsfeld gone, Ms. Rice has faced increased, and somewhat unfamiliar, criticism.

She was the worst National Security Advisor in the history of National Security Advisors. In just her first year, she presided over the worst intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor.  As National Security Advisor, she was totally surprised by September 11th!  And why not?  She had no clue the bin Laden might even be considering attacking the United States!

BEN-VENISTE: Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6 PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB?

RICE: I believe the title was, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."

But, even if Condi had had just some kind of warning more specific than that, well, she, as National Security Advisor could never have imagined that bin Laden would use airplanes as weapons!

(CBS) Two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, an analysis prepared for U.S. intelligence warned that Osama bin Laden's terrorists could hijack an airliner and fly it into government buildings like the Pentagon.

"Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al Qaeda's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House," the September 1999 report said.

Hey, I'm not talking about being perfect.  I'm not talking about making mistakes.  I'm talking about being an oblivious, incompetent fool and, then, still being either remarkably ignorant or shockingly dishonest after the fact.

RICE:   ...[a]nd I said, at one point, that this was a historical memo, that it was -- it was not based on new threat information. And I said, "No one could have imagined them taking a plane, slamming it into the Pentagon" -- I'm paraphrasing now -- "into the World Trade Center, using planes as a missile."

As I said to you in the private session, I probably should have said, "I could not have imagined," because within two days, people started to come to me and say, "Oh, but there were these reports in 1998 and 1999. The intelligence community did look at information about this."

To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Chairman, this kind of analysis about the use of airplanes as weapons actually was never briefed to us.

Well, whatever.  Maybe it's true that no one ever briefed Rice on the possibility of al Qaeda using airplanes as weapons.  Though, it's weird and inconcievable since the Bush administration was alarmed by the fact that terrorists might use airplanes as missiles in July of 2001.

Italy has installed a missile defence system at Genoa's airport to deter airborne attacks during next week's G8 summit, fuelling hysteria about looming violence...

Unidentified planes, helicopters and balloons risk being shot down should they drift too close to the heads of state from the group of seven leading industrialised nations and Russia.

But, still, fine.  United States intelligence prepared a report in 1999, saying terrorists could use aircraft as weapons against the Pentagon and the National Security Advisor was unaware of that.  The President of the United States was in Italy in 2001 and the Italians and the Americans were concerned about terrorists using aircraft as missiles and the National Security Advisor was unaware of that.

Fine, she didn't know!  How could she, the National Security Advisor know?

“[O]n June 21, I believe it was, George Tenet called me and said, 'I don't think we're getting the message through. These people aren't acting the way the Clinton people did under similar circumstances.' And I suggested to Tenet that he come down and personally brief Condi Rice, that he bring his terrorism team with him.

“And we sat in the national security adviser's office. And I've used the phrase in the book to describe George Tenet's warnings as ‘He had his hair on fire.’ He was about as excited as I'd ever seen him.

“And he said, ‘Something is going to happen.’”

A PDB that says bin Laden is going to attack the United States, warnings that terrorists intend to use aircraft as missiles, and the highest ranking anti-terrorist official in the government breifing the National Security Advisor while sitting next to the flaming head of the Director of the CIA...

Well, that's no reason for the Nation Security Advisor to even consider that there might be some threat to our national security.

Then, after being so historically, collosally wrong, Rice made amends by being so concientious to her national security obligatioins that, on the eve of war, she didn't even bother to read the footnotes in National Intelligence Estimates!

QUESTION: Last week, the National Security  Advisor told us that neither she, nor the President were aware of any concerns about the  quality of the intelligence underlying this allegation.  Given that it is a footnote, it's one  of six opinions, but the fact that in this NIE there is expressed concern that this is of  dubious quality, how is it possible that the National Security Advisor and the President  would not have been aware of those reservations?               

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:  They did not read footnotes in a 90page document...The National Security Advisor has people that does that.         

But again, it gets back to the crux.  The NIE does have footnotes.  But the NIE is  still the standard in which is used to make judgments -- not the footnotes, but what there  was a majority opinion on.

As National Security Advisor, she couldn't be bothered to read PDBs, intelligence analysis on al-Qaeda using airplanes as missiles, or footnotes in NIEs.  She didn't notice the numerous exagerations and fabrications in Colin Powell's address to the United Nations or in Bush's State of the Union Address.

She was completely ignorant of the dangers of our pre-emptive invasion of Iraq.

What exactly did she do?  What has she done? 

As National Security Advisor, she followed up the worst intelligence failure in the history of the United States with a series of horrendously embarrasing failures of intelligence, culminating in a failure of intelligence which surpassed her previous disaster and resulted in the Greatest Strategic Blunder In The History Of The World.

And, after her catastrophic successes, she's been shuffled off to State, where's she's been very nearly as stupid, forcing creepy rat bastards like James Baker to finally say publicly:

Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III took issue with Ms. Rice’s refusal to engage Syria diplomatically. Back in his day, he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “We practiced diplomacy full time, and it paid off.”

I could vomit.  This incredibly stupid woman has been such a horrendous blight on our good nation, she should just be ridiculed for what a dumbass she is, fired, and consigned to the scrap heap of history like gullwing cars and other over-rated stupid, useless crap.

She should be ridiculed.  She should be held up as an example of everything we, The American People, don't need in our government.

Instead?

She's still Secretary of State.  She's still interviewed in newspapers and magazines and Sunday morning talk shows like she knows what the fuck she's moronically talking about.  She's still the rock star of the catastrophic Bush administration. 

Republicans still think this moron should be the next President of the United States.

And what is Condi, this totally incompetent fool who failed in nearly every single responsiblity she had to the American people, what is she worried about?

But she sometimes does take criticism personally. Last fall, she telephoned President Bush’s father, who employed her on his National Security Council in the early 1990s, after Bob Woodward’s book “State of Denial” reported that the elder Mr. Bush had said that she had been a “disappointment” and “not up to the job.”

She's worried about Republicans telling the truth.

Good God, when you're a Republican, what exactly do you have to do to have the "liberal" media finally write that you're a fucking disaster?

Please, For The Love Of The First Amendment, Help Us!

It is the culture of this town -- trafficking in rightness. People clamor day in and day out, in that polished and politic way of the Washingtonian, to be proved right.

But on Iraq, the vindicated are pained. There is no gloating -- not with thousands of people dead, Americans and Iraqis; not with the Iraq war precipitating an ongoing foreign policy crisis that has left the United States' global image in tatters.

No gloating from the vindicated?  Puh-lease!  There isn't even any vindication for the vindicated.  The vindicated are still referred to in that town as unserious, as representing the angry left, as partisan, as outside and left of the political center.

Despite the fact that seventy percent of Americans want American troops out of Iraq.

Despite the fact that over sixty percent of Americans now think that the Iraq War was a mistake.

I applaud this article for at least talking about the people who were right.  But vindication?  The people who were right still haven't been vindicated.  The people who were wrong--about everything--are still on television every fucking Sunday. Talking about Iraq.

And the Washington Post still calls those idiots mainstream and serious and experts.

As the debate now centers on what can be salvaged from the U.S. engagement in Iraq, a cynical Washington exercise is underway, some of the vindicated say. It's a snake-like shedding of skin, a policy metamorphosis in which people who once were prominent cheerleaders for the war now are cozying up with the war's early opponents and distancing themselves from their earlier roles.

Matthews has seen it and fears it may warp the crucial debates about the way forward in Iraq and toward Iran.

"So many of the people who were wrong have gone on to being very visible pundits without ever admitting how wrong they were," Matthews says.

Again, this is a good article.  But, really, it's more about your Washington press corps and your "liberal" media than it is about who was right or wrong, or who knows what they're talking about.

Who made these idiots visible pundits?  Who continues to entertain the idiotic, imbecilic opinions of these neo-con Bush incompetents as if they were even remotely credible?

The same people who published this article.