Zed?

so?

In exchange for being the Presidential Candidate, McCain has agreed to be put into the same bubble as Bush. Such craven selling-out for power is a sign that McCain is willing to be as much of a puppet of the neocons as Bush has been…

Gesundheit.

that is exactly correct…of course the CEOs of these media conglomerates ,have the exact same ideology as McInsane…so no prob!
more of the same with McVain

John McCain’s years in the US Senate and his frequent trips to Iraq make him an “expert” on Iraq and foreign affairs.
__________

“We’re winning. I’ve been there. I don’t care what anybody else thinks.”

Sorry, I didn’t read the last thread and was unaware of the decision to make “SO?!?” the New Zed…

By the way, 4000 soldiers in five years equals 800 soldiers a year, equals 2.73 soldiers per day, every day.

So which two soldiers are U.S. policy going to kill today?

Im sure LITTLE john …McCain worries most if he will get enough fiber on his many trips to Eyerak

Whenever I re-hear that sound-bite from Cheeeney, I hear “I know you are, but what am I?” immediately following the SO?!?

Sticking your hand in a meat grinder proves that you have just found the central front on terrorism, every time.

So, McCain is siding with Osama bin Laden? Why isn’t the MSM reporting that?

and how many blind,paralyzed.CRAZY,and impotent?

They have used the war successfully in several campaigns and do not have
another issue to run with. Groupthink is the most salient aspect of the
life inside the DC beltway, combine that with corporate media agitprop,
and you have a one way ticket to hell with an election as a formality.

Great post, Scarecrow.

As you point out, the violence going on today has al Sadr’s militia taking on the Iraqi and US forces. How wild will it get when the Sunni groups we have been funding and arming jump in? How will McCain continue to claim the surge is working if that happens? Who will get the blame? Will they throw Petraeus under the bus?

Actually, it’s 2.19 per day.

How will McCain continue to claim the surge is working if that happens? Who will get the blame? Will they throw Petraeus under the bus?

Maybe we could send all the ARVN expats that we trained so well from Orange Country to Basra.

1. US troops in Middle East generates Islamic fundamental hatred towards US
2. Fundamentalist executes terrorists attacks against us culminating in 9/11
3. US pour more troops into ME culminating into attack on unrelated Iraq
4. Iraq become recruiting bonanza for terrorist and Iraqi freedom fighters
5. US loses inordinate amounts of treasure and over-stretches armed forces

McCain/Republican solution: continue forever, after all it’s good for defense contractors and oil companies, so it must be good for America!

Afternoon, pups. Anyone remember the US Commanding General in the 1st Gulf War who, when explaining his tactics to reporters after the invasion, said, “gotcha” or something like that. Today’s gotcha award does to the person who can find that link.

Scarecrow -
clicked on your Basra link and I must say I have a problem with the NYT although it does appear to be written by actual boots on the ground

when and where would the Iraqi forces ever take on al-Sadr ?!?!

al-Sadr has owned Basra since the invasion (some initial iraqi to iraqi skirmishes – ) and I would like to know what Iraqi troops

this is “civil revolt” – imagine al-Sadr calling for war

Well, here’s another blow to consumer rights:

NEW YORK – A federal appeals court Tuesday struck down a state law requiring airlines to give food, water, clean toilets and fresh air to passengers stuck in delayed planes, saying the measure was well-intentioned but stepped on federal authority.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said New York’s law — the first of its kind in the country — interferes with federal law governing the price, route or service of an air carrier.

The court is probably right about federal preemption, so where are Congress and/or federal regulators?

The phrase “federal regulators” under Bu’ush is oxymoronic.

Hmmm…now why would OBL make comments that seem to ENCOURAGE us to stay in Iraq?…not like he’s got any experience in his past that would suggest that bogging a superpower down in an unending quagmire of a war against an insurgency is a good way to really damage that superpower’s ability to defend itself, deplete its economy of cash, and generally create a culture of corruption in its government or anything…

Oh wait.

I found the NYT article last night, and it’s probably not the best source. Here’s the latest from Reuters and the AP.

Also, Juan Cole.

Norman Schwarzkopf quotes

“The day we executed the air campaign, I said, “we gotcha!””

That’s the one. Thanks.

McCain is starting to remind me of “Baghdad Bob”. Remember him, the Iraqi information minister early in the invasion who kept claiming that Iraq was winning? He would get on camera and hilariously find reasons to claim victory.

Here’s the NYTimes link for the quote.

And another

“You learn far more from negative leadership than from positive leadership. Because you learn how not to do it. And, therefore, you learn how to do it.”

roger that

Westy Westy Westy

This is exactly right … and McCain is an enabler of Bin Laden … pass it on …

((( Scarecrow )))

Wasn’t there some other war where we controlled the air. . .and the daytime?

Scarecrow, Your post provides another reason — perhaps the principal one — why the Democratic nominee needs to be a great communicator. The American people who see our troops tied down and our vets returning in body bags, traumatized and missing body parts understand that something is wrong. They do not see rich kids going off to fight this ‘decisive struggle’, just poor kids trying to get a leg up on life. I originally supported Edwards because I believed he could articulate that growing unease; as I learned more about Obama, I discovered he could do the same thing, perhaps even better. Mrs. Clinton can’t do it. Even if she didn’t support the geopolitical frame that makes this war acceptable to a large part of the establishment, she would still be unable to articulate a case against it.

Obama can make the case against the war in a way that resonates with ordinary people. The MSM are not going to do it, because their corporate masters cannot afford risking the ire of a potential Republican President.

The point of this ramble is that rhetoric is crucial. Until the case against this war is made clearly and persuasively, until McCain’s idiotic views are exposed for what they are, people will think there must be something there that their ‘natural rulers’ know that they don’t know. And they will accept whatever happens until the pain becomes to great to bear, at which point it will be too late.

… assuming of course there’s only one wrong way …

Thanks. Forgot Norman’s name. I’ve added a link.

sorry Scarecrow,im doing a drive-by Ot,cause ill be gone for many hrs

from Americablog

to put this in perspective our GDP is about $14 trillion a year. http://www.bea.gov/national/xls/gdplev.xls

This oil adds to the trade deficit which is roughly $900 trillion. http://www.bea.gov/scb/pdf/200…..407…

As the dollar weakens, as a result of this trade deficit and indirectly, government deficits our national wealth decreases.

We have lost roughly half of our national wealth since GWB came to power and if McStain is elected we may lose the other half.

hey Scarecrow –

back to the post topic – a lot of our and Glenzilla’s questions about McWrong and the Media could be answered by this Saturday’s Book Salon

the excerpt avail online lays out the strategy but am dying to read their book to see how he put it in action

Book Salon

If McCAin is elected, losing the other half of our national wealth would be the least of our worries. I’m more concerned about the nuclear winter.

What’s great about Bush and McCain is you will have to pay less taxes to the Gov’t and more $$$ to the Corporations … corporate welfare is what these guys fight for and so far, ‘the surge’ is working …

Yeah. Seems to me I recall something about it on the news sometime back. Something over yonder in Vietnam IIRC.

thanks for the reminder about our upcoming Book Salon on McCain and the media. Who would have predicted that this topic would be timely, eh? :)

Al Sadr is probably po’ed because he realizes all the U.S. currency he’s been paid has lost half its value …

let’s start with going somewhere that we have no clue about. . .again.

Touche !

the surge is working as long as the occupation stays off the front page and nightly news… that’s what they’ve achieved and what they’re aiming for going forward. Keeping the flow of funding to Halliburton, etc., while keeping the american people quiet. that’s success, and an “outcome worth the sacrifice”.

In 71 Kissinger called Elleberg into his office and said, “is there anyone that know anything about these people”? Of course Bernard Fall had been dead for 5 years or so by then.

of course we have go somewhere else to get the real skinny -

per groupnewsblog, this is Petraeus’ deal, forcing Iraqi govt to make a move in Basra when the Brits refused and it has pissed off the young Iman – how much is the question

link

Long way of saying nobody gives a fuck?

that would be success in their eyes, yes …

bom dia, Petrocelli

the surge is working as long as the occupation stays off the front page and nightly news… that’s what they’ve achieved and what they’re aiming for going forward. Keeping the flow of funding to Halliburton, etc., while keeping the american people quiet. that’s success, and an “outcome worth the sacrifice”.

I am led to believe the surge has also “worked” in the breaking of our armed forces

they want to privatize everything, the only way to do that is to break those services they want to privatize

thus the surge, thus the diversion, thus blackwater

((((( WB )))))

great post scarecrow–i couldn’t find the quote, was worth a try even though i’m on dial-up–glad dakine found it, does he win a trip to iraq?…..

i did find a post where we cheated to win in war games though. against our pals the brits, was pretty funny. in a sad way.

http://education.guardian.co.u…..10,00.html

and your last line about Pres ’desperately’ trying to convince—that’s just his speech writers, he doesn’t really care about it enough to convince anyone.

cheney is desperate, cuz he wants to be RIGHT…….but bush, not so much. you have to care about something in order to be desperate about it……….jmho.

===========

epu’d from ’mccain moment’ thread-

Stutter-Brain McCain
and
Cindy could be Strutter McCain

South Vietnam, like Iraq, was a western construct, it never really had
any claim to autonomy. Iraq was a fiction sketched out on a napkin at
Shepherd’s Hotel in 1920 by Churchill, T.E. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell
to guarantee british access to the oil of mesopotamia. Nothing has
changed except the american willingness to repeat the mistakes of the
british, french and turkish empires in the same area.

B.I.N.G.O

I think it’s quite interesting how McCain seems to want to let Bin Laden choose the agenda and set the battlefield up to his greatest advantage. It seems obvious to me that we should evacuate most of the troops from Iraq and send many to Afghanistan to bring the fight to Bin Laden. He could actually be caught in a squeeze play that sends him from where he is to seek out a better, more protected area deeper in Pakistan, or he may be driven to expose himself. I do know that there is a problem when you agree to let your worst enemy select where and when the fighting will occur, and you believe every single word he says. It’s as if our leaders are mere puppets dancing on the enemy’s strings. And while they were at it, they got rid of the one person standing between the Iraqi Shia and the Iranian Shia. If Islamic extremists don’t succeed in establishing a Caliphate in an Islamic crescent, it won’t be because we didn’t do all we could to help them.

John McCain probably believes he won in 2000, and is looking forward to his third term.

Thank you some more Scarecrow,
personally I think McCain’s danger to us (and the world) is bigger than his ideology. But McCain’s ideology is a srsly big enough problem that makes him unfit for the job

I just don’t understand why the Iraqis aren’t grateful for us fighting Al-Qaida over there so we don’t have to fight them here.

thanks
I feel so lethargic today (scanning what I have ingested today) but it’s nice to have mr wobbs home for the week (spring break). how are you and yours?

I tried watching McCain’s economic speech earlier and I must say, i came away more confused than he was.

btw, above I meant somewhere other than Corp Media, not FDL :D

o/t

any Orange County firedogs out there ?

ya may wanna write an LTE about this

Army of Dude reflects on 4000

I kind of chuckled it was like an econ 101 class but i’m not sure if Mccain’s speech was for the folks there or more for himself

I’m in LA county but I will forward it to the 3 dems i know that live out that way

… and in that regard, McCain is following SOP of the Repugs … If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullsh*t …

The whole argument — Lieberman likes to make this — that says if we got out then OB/AQ would immediately establish a “caliphate” from here to there conveniently assumes that no one else in the region would oppose this. These guys can’t even beat the Sunnis in Iraq.

well of course, you know how repugs are befuddled by facts.

Hillary trying to deflect discussion from her lie about the Bosnia trip by dissing at some length Obama’s choosing to stay in his church during a presser in PA. Saying the “misspeak” shows she’s human, which may come as a surprise to some.

Frankly, given the surly tone in her voice, “human” is not what I think it shows she is….

Interesting to hear a Democratic consultant saying on MSNBC that the behind the scenes “campaign” the Clintonistas are waging with wavering superdelegates is similar to Carville’s public screeds against Richardson. Leave us at your own risk and you’ll get the same.

Kill the rooster to scare the monkey? Sun Tzu 101.

And it bears saying. With all that military experience Chelsea gained accompanying her mother into war zones, why isn’t she in uniform in her mother’s authorized war? Along with the Bush and Chee-knee and Rummy and Lieberliar scions, of course.

We had our spring break last week, where 6′ of snow melted to 4′ … *g* … weirdest winter in 30 years, IIRC …

The kids lurve all the snow, though … kinds hard to be upset when there are 30 of them screaming and laughing all day … *g*

and just how serious an idea within Islam is the restoration of the Caliphate?

sounds similar to my childhood in montana. But my father wasn’t so fond of all the noise. At some point during the day, he would throw us outside and tel us that we have a whole prairie to play in, so go play in it. He wasn’t fooling anyone, we would see him watching us, smiling as we pelted each other with snow balls, mush balls, or water balloons.

o/t

Nancy Reagan endorses McToast

I suspect that this:

I feel so lethargic today

is related to this:

I tried watching McCain’s economic speech earlier

The one thing everyone in that region agree on is, as soon as U.S. forces leave, AQ in Iraq will be annihilated …

I’m shocked, shocked that anyone would see this thread in Obama vs. Clinton terms. Can’t we wait until I do another “Clinton said what?” and Jane does another Richardson post? Discipline.

I saw that and it made me sad but from a strategic standpoint, i can understand why she did it as well as some other folks in her campaign trying to resurrect the whole wright business.

Hooo Rah

LOL
Your right. I said earlier that his speeches are like warm milk, they knock me out. I don’t think layiing on a hammock helped matters either (the sun finally came out)

you bet. the secuular sunnis are no more a fan than the shiites. no way AQ can take over the country so I really wish the folks wading on the shallow end of the gene pool would stop saying it

McBush is WAY too stupid to be president. We have already proved that the stupid gooper president thing doesn’t work!

Support for caliphate? Well, here are three items:
1. The King of Saudi Arabia is calling for interfaith dialogue.

2. The Pope made a display of baptizing a Muslim convert on Easter.

3. McCain seeks out Hagee’s endorsement.

But of course, the Muslim threat is the strategic challenge of our lifetime. You can’t make up this stuff.

tHAT’S 3

ya go up ta the arches an order yer McBurger- it comes with McFries and tastes like McShit.

That’s a preview of life with McBush

yes, but there are still plenty of lil goobers that want him as prez and will vote for him. ahhh never underestimate the ability of a small group of stupid people to wreck havoc.

McCain is going to do whatever it is he does and say stupid things. We need to go after the MSM to force them to report what is going on. We have no way to stop McC from being dumb and out of the loop. We can use his past statements against him – which will make him furious – but we need media coverage to really get it out. Let’s work on the Media now.

I was only off by 50% — better than Rummy’s predictions on the war’s costs.

Certainly, Hillary claiming she has foreign policy “experience” in Bosnia that turns out to be a fantasy does nothing to bolster the Democrat’s foreign policy creds. It just plays into McCain’s argument that his Dem opponents are naive.

So although McCain may not have the expertise either, rather than shoot down his claims, how do the Dem candidates make their own arguments? I would like to see Obama, in particular, make and win that argument.

The Republican foreign policy pregression:
From Yee-Haw
to
If I were 20 years younger I’d whip yer butt

Talk about setting low expectations

… sounds like you know my in- laws … *g*

That is the sophisticated version of it, yeah.

A friend of mine is a Prof in Saudi … and he’s pleasantly surprised at the speed at which the Kingdom is becoming Liberal … McCain’s 100 year war will stop that however …

Looks like tensions still pretty high in Basra. Lastest from AP.

Although all sides appeared reluctant to trigger a conflagration, Brig. Gen. Ed Cardon, assistant commander of the U.S. task force operating south of Baghdad, said the situation in the south was “very complicated” and “the potential for miscalculation is high.”

The burgeoning crisis — part of an intense power struggle among Shiite political factions — has major implications for the United States. An escalation could unravel the cease-fire which al-Sadr proclaimed last August. A resumption of fighting by his militia could kill more U.S. soldiers and threaten — at least in the short run — the security gains Washington has hailed as a sign that Iraq is on the road to recovery.

Anyone else finding FDL comments loading very slowly today?

Today’s MSM consider this administration to have expertise in fighting the GWOT. Why would it criticize its clone? McCain’s credibility balance with the MSM bank seems to be as valuable as the investments made with Bear Stearns. It’s not about whether there’s any real money there; it’s all about whether the creditor expects to be repaid. Rather like the lobbyists who are working for McCan’t “for free”.

Nancy Reagan endorses McToast

is mccain for stem cell research?

if he is then I’d be surprised with the endorsement

Yep, comments are slow to load …

The one thing everyone in that region agree on is, as soon as U.S. forces leave, AQ in Iraq will be annihilated …

but there will also be genocide

do not believe our solution is going to be roses and gold, we are gonna get alot of heat for it and might even loose teh next election, but leave we must and we must pay the price whatever that is

Quote – “Why would it criticize its clone?”

Exactly right !

Yeah, well my bro-in-law is a goober and well you can imagine just how ‘lively’ discussions are around the dinner table.

It’s called dishonestly positing a zero-sum game between us and al-Quaeda in the region. That this kind of cynical, illogical simplification is treated seriously is most of the problem.

Like Bush, he either doesn’t understand the strategic forces at work or has chosen to misrepresent them to the American people.

It’s entirely possible to misunderstand and misrepresent; they are neither mutually exclusive nor beyond McCain’s limited abilities.

I believe Obama has a good gameplan for resolving this … the best of many bad options … and I’m not shilling for him, but having a frank dialogue with all sides will turn this around quickly. There are many bright minds in the ME and they all know how to work this out …

I have tons of relatives in the U.S who were Bush/Repub loyalists … they’re not nearly so vocal these days …

I have tons of relatives in the U.S who were Bush/Repub loyalists … they’re not nearly so vocal these days …

they might not be vocal but they refuse to believe any of this is bush’s fault

it’s known as cognitive dissonance and it is pervasive

thank you. I keep hearing this as a right wing terror point but it’s just absurd.

Most of my relatives now realize that he’s the reason for this clusterf*ck …

mr wobbs said to bro in law a few weeks ago that any attempt to defend the administration and really the repug party does little except make him (bro in law) look like an all day sucker who is so tied to loyalty that he would sooner see his own country and constitution destroyed and wear a flag lapel pin while doing so rather than actually do the work of a true patriot and push back against the lies that the repugs are peddling.

I’m thinking we won’t be having any more political discussions for a while

I’m sure he didn’t appreciate some fuh-ren-nuh telling him that

my friends who supported him are still going to support a republican and still think Iran is a threat that needs to be addressed

so while they can blame bush for some things, they still believe in the republican party

Our family dinners are more congenial … all Liberals but we’ve had dustups about Hillary V Barack … until I remind them all that this nomination playing to a stalemate might just give Gore an impetus to step in … *g*

great strategy but our dinners are chock full of Europeans and they loooove to talk politics (their own country and here). there are disagreements but in the end everyone is still friends

I saw a clip on cable news of John McCain giving his mortgage crisis speech in Orange County today. Typical tele-prompter speech where his eyes are following word for word and his head moving slightly left to right as he delivers the prepared sentences. Then the camera swings around and shows the tele-prompter, exposing McCain’s speech giving cheating. It was funny, I have never seen anybody do that to McCain before. If that is the only way he can work, McCain is going to be in real trouble during the presidential debates. McTele-prompter!