Saturday, March 18, 2006
The Recent Past
Driftglass is always beautiful when he roasts David Brooks, and today is no exception. I especially love this part, the culmination if Driftglass explaining Brooks’s elaborate theory about how Bush is really a “Sekrit Genius” and can’t be to blame for Iraq. But pay special attention to this: And because his existential terror at facing the abyss of the complete implosion of ideology-an ideology on which both his psyche and livelihood are entirely dependent -runs so deep that instead of using Occam's Razor to shave this dog’s ugly ass, Bobo (like all Republicans still clinging hysterically to the Bush Bandwagon as it plummets out of control towards the pointy rocks) must desperately invent increasingly weird, disassociative, Rube Goldberg linguistic contraptions to rationalize away the obvious fact that… …Dubya’s an Idiot. This is the same stink of intellectual dishonesty that clings to The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, Newsmax, Powerline, National Review, etc. You will see the same “increasingly weird, disassociative, Rube Goldberg linguistic contraptions” to rationalize inconvenient facts and situations away for conservatives in this country like the theory that WMDs slipped into Syria, or that the CIA mislead the president. Upon closer investigation these theories simply reek of willful dishonesty. The CIA only handles about 20% of the intelligence in this country. The bulk of it is handled through the Defense Department. The State Department handles more and it is separate from both the CIA and the DoD. Bush appointed a dozen people to process the information concerning Iraq who were all PNAC signees and neocon warmongers and a dozen more to sell that shit to the American people in the form of the White House Iraq Group, among them Condi Rice, Stephen Hadley, Karl Rove, Andrew Card, Mary Matalin, and “Scooter” Libby. So keep these names in mind when you see them raise their ugly heads on Sunday morning talk shows and the like. Mary Matalin defending George W. Bush is like Spirew Agnew vouching for Richard Nixon. Mary Matalin was one of the masterminds behind the political ploy to question the motives of democrats who criticize the president, in other words, call them terrorist sympathizers. The White House set up an extensive apparatus composed of loyal PNAC signees to be in charge of processing information regarding Iraq. John Bolton was in the State Department as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control when he gave Greg Thielmann the boot and started piping intelligence straight into the State Department. Don Rumsfeld set up the Office of Special Plans to second-guess the CIA and to operate under the auspices of the hard-liners in the White House, like himself, Dick Cheney, and W. “Scooter” was also among those who applied pressure. William Luti and Douglas Feith ran the operations of the Office, in which they hired out gunslingers from right-wing think tanks and corporate-military organizations like PNAC to help them “analyze” information and stovepipe it directly into the State of the Union Address like it was verified fact, all with the consonance of George W. Bush, Don Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney. But, of course, it was really the CIA’s fault. Sure it was. So who was punished or disgraced or disciplined after it was found there were no WMDs? No one. Being a conservative means never having to mean it when you say you’re sorry. Bolton got appointed Ambassador to the UN. Wolfowitz was chosen to be president of the World Bank. The analysts were given praise. Tenet was given The Medal of Freedom. They weren’t punished because they didn’t fail. They did what they were told to do. Check out Paul Pillar jumping ship. Read his analysis here. Are we waiting for God himself to part the clouds and thunder, “The intelligence was doctored, you idiots!” That was the guy at the CIA for analyzing intelligence concerning the Middle East.
I mean is anything debatable and “uncertain” as long as the Right is willing to deny it? Was anyone paying attention when Pillar made his criticisms public a month or two ago? When Lou Dobbs or whoever mentions the Iraq intelligence is he honestly going to say it was “allegedly” doctored? Or will the MSM people just ignore the fact that the president lied the American people into a war, like the proverbial elephant in the room, right next to the other elephants the Bush Administration has birthed and left in full view of the American public, and will they continue on discussing the Bush Administration like it isn’t a blatantly criminal enterprise, like it’s just got the flu, it’s just tired and a little incompetent, bless its little heart?
I tire of rehashing old questions and old information, but it serves us well to remember the obvious once in a while, to not take the lessons of the past for granted.
# posted by BitterHarvest @ 5:43 PM 
