Thursday, January 19, 2006
Bad news for GOP
Bad news for GOP apologists all around, today.
Bob Herbert writes a short but scathing op-ed in the NYT today grilling the administration over warrantless wiretapping. Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann, in another op-ed, write “The two of us have been immersed in Washington politics for more than 36 years. We have never seen the culture so sick or the legislative process so dysfunctional.” A recently released report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service concludes that the Bush Administration’s limited briefings for Congress on the NSA wiretapping program are “inconsistent with the law.” This adds to their earlier report saying that the program itself was probably illegal. Last week the official Vatican newspaper published an article saying that intelligent design is not science and should not be taught as such. Human Rights Watch, a valued source for earlier administrations in castigating the human rights abuses of other countries, asserted yesterday that the Bush administration had undertaken a concerted policy of abusing detainees, “a deliberate policy choice.”
Wow. If the news gets any worse for Dubya and the republican-controlled congress they’ll have to flee Washington to the hills of West Virginia to wage a guerilla resistance against leftist rebels.
None of these facts, however, slow the march of the partisan suicide brigades in the rightist media into the guns of reality. I still have access to only one progressive news source on my radio dial, compared with three conservative ones. You can bet that the conservatives are still waging an all-out war against the rising tide of anger in this country and around the world against the policies of the Bush Administration and the republican congress. As I wrote yesterday, their ideological inflexibility will only worsen the hammer blow when it falls. I hope Laura Ingraham is prepared to be satisfied with a discredited career in broadcast media, with the heckling that will come five years from now (“Remember Laura Ingraham, the talk show host that defended warrantless wiretapping? I hear she’s still syndicated in Montana…”).
Osama bin Laden released a tape today threatening further terrorist attacks if the U.S. continues its present course but offering a truce is the U.S. pulls out of the Middle East (and probably, also, stops funding Israel). In other words, more of the same.
Over four years after the Preznit said he wanted Osama “dead or alive” this guy is still rattling his scimitar. By all accounts he is nowhere in or around Iraq, the sinkhole into which the bulk of our mobile forces has been thrown. Has it ever occurred to anyone in the Pentagon that if we had 120,000 troops in Afghanistan instead of Iraq we might have caught this guy by now?
Oh, but I forgot. In March of 2002, the Preznit underwent a change of heart. “I truly am not that concerned about him,” he said. Osama is on the run, he’s hiding under a rock somewhere, whatever. On to Iraq.
In the words of Noam Chomsky, “there is no war on terror.” Osama is wandering around loose somewhere and the president is “not that concerned.” Worldwide terrorist attacks have increased dramatically since Bush took office. U.S. casualties have skyrocketed. “Mission Accomplished,” Mr. President!
Bravely charging the dragon in his lair, one caller said to Michael Medved that maybe we should pull out of the Middle East to solve this problem. Medved was not pleased. He rampaged (“your argument is idiotic, sir”) all over history, claiming that Jimmy Carter did nothing when Iranians seized U.S. hostages, apparently unaware of the rescue attempt by special forces that Carter initiated. “We could have destroyed one of their cities,” Medved argued, revealing a subtle touch to foreign policy analysis he is never given credit for. Killing tens of thousands of Iranian civilians as retaliation for 300 angry students taking 66 American hostages is the kind of incisive policy solutions Medved offers on a daily basis.
Reality is slowly catching up to the conservatives in this country, like a tiger stalking a dazed tourist with a bleeding head wound in the Bangladeshi jungle. Stumbling and thrashing about will only hasten their inevitable end.
# posted by BitterHarvest @ 3:36 PM 
