Powell Endorsement Would Have Been Meaningful When Race Was Close

Few people now think McCain can overcome his disadvantages and win.  I hope that is true.  I hope the Powell endorsement will help that. 

     Let's not forget that Powell sat in front of the United Nations and spewed one of the most murderous lines of utter bullshit that humankind has heard in the last few decades.  Supposedly, Powell wouldn't repeat some of the crap the Bush administration told him to, but he did repeat some crap that any reasonable person should have known was garbage (e.g. "unaccounted for stockpiles"), and much else that was of dubious value, while completely avoiding anything that might have cast doubt on his talk (e.g. volunteered CIA interview with Saddam's son-in-law, the defector Gen. Hussein Kamel).

     It's a shame that people like Colin Powell are trumpeted by our press corps as people of substance, whose opinions matter.  He's not a terrible general, but as a politician, he should just shut the fuck up.

War Criminal Carnival!

The Hudson Institute is hosting Paul Wolfowitz talk about Doug Feith's new book.  Neither Paul nor Doug, psychotically, are at all repentant or sorry.

Wolfowitz closed his remarks with the kind of historical ignorance which dominated his entire sheep-in-wolf's clothing existence.  He said he'd never heard of an insurgency where foreigners were brought in to kill locals.  Does he smoke crack?  I don't think he does.  I think he was just born stupid.  Can you picture this "Look, we'd like your help overthrowing our oppressors, but you aren't a local, and if you killed one of the overlords, it would be a case of us bringing in outsiders to kill locals."

Were any Chechens killed in the First Chechen War?  My research shows "1,500 Dagestanis , 1,000 Georgians and Abkhazians , 500 Ingushes and 200 Azeris , as well as 300 Turks , 400 Slavs from Baltic states and Ukraine, and more than 100 Arabs and Iranians" were involved.

The French were brought in to help fight the American Revolution, and undoubtedly Americans fought with the British against them, perhaps 50,000.

I charge George Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith with a million counts of involuntary manslaughter.

Six Generals Remain Calm

     Reported widely, six Generals have asked Rumsfeld to get out of the way.

     It's nice to see the top brass get behind Remain Calm blog, which has been calling for Rumsfeld's ouster for a half year or more now.  The top of my blog currently says "Remain Calm   Politics is for Adults, expect Strong Language.   Impeach the Secretary of Defense."

     Apparently, centrist Iraq-(and-Iran?)-war-enthusiast and House Democrat Harold Ford, Jr of Tennessee has been listening to the water cooler talk here at Remain Calm Global HQ, where, just three days ago, it dawned on your humble author that the only way to save the bacon of the current (ahem) "government" of the United States was to give Colin Powell the job.

     No, Powell is no hero for his role in lending his credibility to the current Iraq imbroglio, but that's not what I said.

Horse's Ass Covers MD Brown, and Tidbits

•      David Goldstein (not the one I know, is it, Simon's Rock?) runs a website called Horse's Ass.  It's got a lot of the details of the patheticness in the shape of a person known as the current head of FEMA, MD Brown (second headline).

•      By the way, Colin Powell announced his resignation on 2004-11-15, and Michael Powell announced his 2005-01-21.  Although the father waited until after the election, I have a strong suspcion the son's decision wasn't entirely his own.  I wonder if Rehnquist's daughter will keep her job as the Inspector General of Health and Human Services?  Nice article on nepotism.

•      In case there was any doubt, and I think there are some people still don't know, Christopher Hitchens is a second rate hack.  Read this, from Foreign Policy (does anyone know what's up with this outfit? Second time on my negative-radar in as many months).

  Richard Boucher, the State Department’s chief spokesman. He took me deftly over and around the various hurdles involved in any Colin Powell retrospect, and demonstrated the diplomatic adroitness that has endeared him to so many correspondents, and seemed almost to smooth away much of the jaggedness.

       Endearing government spokespeople?  Boucher is the guy they don't tell the nasty stuff, so he can say with a straight face "We are doing nothing improper."  Boucher's an ass, and Hitch is kissing it.

Iraq Conspiracy?  No, Confluence (UPDATE 2)

UPDATE 1: Added Palast link to list
UPDATE 2: Added Perle/Soviet to list

     In the last couple days I've seen a couple posts which attempt to answer the question "Why did we fight in Iraq?" and I realized that although I'd commented this material elsewhere, I'd never blogged it myself.  There were a host of forces at play, all with the same aim, while the anti-war arguments were generally based on hypothesis or law.  I'm not sure which order to describe the factors, so please don't read anything in there.

• PNAC and neo-conservatism always favored using US force to destroy particular enemies of the US establishment, not that Cheney didn't do business with official US enemies.  Emerging out of 70s hawkish leftism (e.g. Scoop Jackson) and the classrooms of the disciples of Leo Strauss, these disturbing elements of the US power structure argue from the axiom that the US is the world Leviathan, a position which is false.
• War is good for the media's ratings.
• Colin Powell, even before Bush took office, was known to favor war against Iraq and North Korea, both of whom he considered Cold War aggressor nations which had not paid for their aggression.  It's hard for me to see how Kim Jong Il can be blamed for the war of his father, Kim Il Song, but that didn't stop General Powell.
• Soldiers want action and medals.
• The foreign policies of certain US allies, namely, Israel.  Israel wanted Saddam gone.  No one can argue that the Saudis really loved Saddam, either.
• In 2000, Iraq became the first major oil producing country to replace the dollar with the Euro.  Many trillions of Middle Eastern "Petrodollars" have long been converted into US dollars before being spent.  This is a great deal for the United States, and changing it would weaken the US economy.
• Defense contractors want sales.
• Oil security.  I think the major US focus on oil as a national security measure dates back to WWII.  Tanks and planes don't run without oil.  Battles in WWII were won and lost based on fuel supplies.  Britian invaded Iraq during WWII because Iraq wanted to sell oil to Germany (a fact notably absent from this CIA timeline).  Having Iraq's oil in friendlier hands would help this aging national security issue, and continue to bolster the US economy.
• Saddam had been, in fact, a murderous tyrant (although everyone glosses over the fact that his last few years had been his best, kills-per-year wise).
• Saddam allegedly tried to kill Bush's father.  Taking the nation to war for personal reasons is treason.
• Because they could.  Some people were tasked with things like "Find any dirt on Iraq that you can, and make a big stink about it."  They were given a job by the President, and they did it well (enough).  William Luti and Doug Feith figure prominently as neo-cons who can assert "I was just doing my job."
• The last reason I can think of is Bush's religion.  He doesn't see things as events in the grand scheme of history, they are Signs From God, and God got him elected, and therefore, God's will must be done.  Israel is not a country, but the Holy Land, and Saddam was certainly an enemy of Israel.
• If Greg Palast's report is correct, it had a lot more to do with greed than I have suggested.  Pure, unadulterated profit motive.
• According to Richard Perle biographer Alan Weisman, Perle himself really wanted to live/relive the feeling people had when the Soviet Union toppled.  Kinda confusing, though, since we didn't shoot at Gorbachev, or try a "decapitation" attack, to do it.

     The arguments against the war?  The maintenance of the Westphalian system, international law, anti-pre-emption, and the "bound to be a quagmire" thesis are all based on high concepts or speculation. 

• It might be obvious to sane people, but no one could prove it would be a quagmire.  No one knew, in advance, that Bu$hCo would choose oil-men and terrorists to run the new Iraq.  As unlikely as it was, war planners made comparisons to post-WWII Japan or Germany. 
• It's doubtful Bush considered Saddam's Iraq as worthy of the rights of a Sovereign, as he doesn't consider Arabs to be worthy of the rights in the Constitution. 
• And international law?  Why, I saw the Bush administration international law expert on C-SPAN.  It was pathetic.  He brought up the Caroline incident and the Cuba blockade/missile crisis as examples of US pre-emption.  The Caroline incident was a British action, while the Cuba blockade was used as an example, five years later, by Egypt, in their blocking the straits of Tiran (an important part of the run-up to the 67 war).

     So to will this action of Bush's be used in the future to start wars.  Like the Supreme Court decision that brought this mindnumbingly incompetent tool to power (Bush V Gore is the first case in USSC history that declares it is inadmissible as precedent), the Bush administration ignores the precedent setting nature of their war.  Considering, for example, past Bush maladministration efforts, wouldn't Iran be in their right minds to attack America now?

     The War in Iraq must be repudiated.

Thou Shalt Not Undermine...

     Reuters is entitling this peice of comic diplomacy "Powell Attacks European NATO Allies on Iraq."...
"When it comes time to perform a mission, it seems to us to be quite awkward for suddenly members of that international staff to say 'I am unable to go,'"
Awkward for whom, he didn't actually say, although "an expert" thinks it was probably dead Iraqis.
"You[] are hurting the credibility and cohesion [of such an] international staff organization,"
by not following along with our lying, rape, murder and plunder, and without credibility, what do you really have?

Don Rumsfeld, fuckwad

No one more than Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz should be blamed for the Iraq War. They were directing D Feith and W Luti, who were also cognizant of their role. The Defense Intelligence Agency, controlled by the Secretary of Defense, and not the Director of Central Intelligence (Head of the CIA), is 80-85% of the total US intelligence budget. DCI Tenet probably made some complaints, but apparently not enough. Secretary of State C Powell wanted to fight again in al-Iraq, according to someone I heard before the Bush administration took office. It's in the last couple minutes of the 40th anniversary of Eisenhower's Military-Industrial Complex speech, which, since our elections are regularly timed, was a week before Bush took office. It was hosted by the Nation magazine.

Kudos to Senator Dorgan

Thanks for injecting the truth about the aluminum tubes into the record. America has people who enrich uranium. Our experts, at Oak Ridge Nat'l Laboratories, say it is impossible for those tubes to be used for enrichment. Even if the Iraqis had tried, they would have failed with those tubes. Yet, Tenet and Powell asserted that "most scientists" agree with they were for an atom bomb program. Scientist Houston Wood of Oak Ridge National Laboratories, in fact, asserts that he doesn't know a single scientist alive, or anyone in academia, who agrees with Tenet and Powell. Senator Kyl instantly begins arguing from authority, a logical fallacy. Senator Kyl tries to dissemble. "Intelligence is complex." Senator Kyl begins trying to push the argument that we went to war for a U.N. resolution, when his party, himself, and especially the President, have done everything in their power to insult, deride and generally abuse the United Nations. Shameless, shameless, shameless. Senator Kyl is an ultra-conservative, who has never voted for the United Nations, and certainly would never thank them for disarming Saddam Hussein. Even though well over 50% of Senator Dorgan's argument was about specific claims by Tenet and Powell concerning aluminum tubes, Senator Kyl doesn't mention that at all. Senator Kyl is just a monster, accusing our side of ignoring the totality of evidence. The totality of evidence, the mountains of totally shoddy material that was the basis of the Iraq War is exactly what had to be examined for the truth to be seen. Perhaps Senator Kyl is just not smart enough to understand these things.