US Diary: Cheney's bitch Bush stumbles on

I can just hear Cheney and Rove talking:

Cheney: “So, what do we do with Junior next?”
Rove: “I think we send him out to make some speeches.”
Cheney: “Yeah, ginger up the base.”
Rove: “We can try a new line – how we have to fight the Islamofascists.”
Cheney: “Sounds good to me. Keeps him out of trouble – and out of my hair.”
Rove: “I’ll give him his orders.”
Cheney: “You do that. Who’s going to write the speech?”
Rove: “I’ve got some good guys lined up. I’ll oversee it myself, vet every word.”
Cheney: “Thank you, Karl. Now excuse me, someone’s got to be running the country.”


1. Memo to the president: time for your performance review -- by Paul Woodward (from War in Context)

Let's see if I've got it straight. The stalwart Churchillians (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al) are alerting us to the fascist threat (from Muslim extremists), but the Chamberlain-like defeatists (Democrats, et al) want us to cut and run. So far, so good.

But just a minute! If Chamberlain was waving the white flag in 1938 and three-and-a-half years into the war in Iraq we're being told not to succumb to defeatism, wouldn't that imply World War Two had started in 1935?

I suppose a few neocons might view history this way, but since the war in Europe actually started in 1939 and the United States didn't enter the war until December 1941, this WW2 analogy would only work if, come 1944, the defeat of fascism had still have been nowhere in sight. (In reality, by that time, the unconditional surrender of the Nazis was only months away.)

If an administration had found itself in that situation, it would have been facing increasing criticism, not from defeatists, but from those who questioned its competence to achieve its stated aims -- the very circumstance in which the current administration now finds itself.

Bush says again and again, we can't leave Iraq "before the job is done," but it's time he re-read the job description. In a document written this month, the Pentagon provides a useful summary of the mission in Iraq:

a. Assist the people of Iraq in building a free, democratic nation at peace within its borders and with its neighbors;
b. Destroy or defeat insurgent forces;
c. Instill a broad respect for human rights throughout the country;
d. Assist the Iraqi government in building institutions, offices, bureaus, and agencies, that are effective, efficient, and free of corruption;
e. Rebuild modern, effective Iraqi security forces that respect human rights and have leaders at every level who have integrity and are loyal to the properly constituted Iraqi authorities;
f. Revive the economy of Iraq primarily by rebuilding infrastructure and the oil industry.
g. Ensure that members of the Central Command (CENTCOM) Area of Responsibility (AOR) understand Coalition aims, goals and objectives

We all know the job is nowhere near completion, but three-and-a-half years into this war President Bush is way overdue in submitting himself for a performance review.

And, yes, we also know that being the president is really, really, really hard work, but really, Mr. Bush, no one forced you to accept the job. If you're not up to the task, stop whining, shape up or quit. You're not indispensable, nor is anyone in your administration, nor is anyone in Congress. Anyone who can't demonstrate their competence deserves to get fired.


2. The Bush-Is-an-Idiot Camp Grows -- by David Corn (from TomPaine.com)

The other day I crossed paths with a conservative talk show host. We chatted about current events. He noted that he was quite pissed off at the neocons for suggesting that American blood should be spilled to benefit the Iraqis. Let the Iraqis take care of themselves, he huffed. I asked, "Are you in the Bush-is-an-idiot camp?"

This was a reference to a recent segment on Joe Scarborough's MSNBC show during which Scarborough, a former Republican congressman from Florida, posed the question, "Is our president an idiot?" After playing a montage of video clips showing Bush at his tongue-tied worst ("Fool me once, shame on you-fool me-you can't get fooled again"), Scarborough said that an former close aide to President Bush had recently told him that Bush is "intellectually shallow and one of the most incurious public figures this man has ever met." Scarborough claimed that Bush is "getting worse instead of better" and that when it comes to presidential stupidity Bush is "in a league by himself." He added, "I don't think he has the intellectual depth."

My conservative interlocutor fidgeted, as he considered how to respond. After a moment or so, he said softly, "Well, he can be moronic."

I have long thought it was not politically wise for Democrats to deride Bush as dumb. And I believed it was wrong to assume-as did many Bush-bashers-that W. was not intelligent. After all, he managed to become president-which is not an easy task (even if Karl Rove is your master strategist). He also managed, against the odds, to change the tax code to benefit folks like him. How stupid is that? But watching Bush grapple with the mess in Iraq-a problem entirely of his own making-it's hard to sidestep the conclusion that his own, let's say, information-processing abilities are profoundly affecting national security, and not for the better.

I am haunted by an exchange that occurred at Bush's press conference last week. ABC News' Martha Raddatz asked Bush if it was time for "a new strategy in Iraq." That's a reasonable question. The recent surge of violence there-about 10,000 civilian deaths over the course of three months-should give anyone pause, especially the decider-in-chief who thought invading Iraq was a fine idea in the first place. Replying to Raddatz, Bush said, "The strategy is to help the Iraqi people achieve their objectives and their dreams, which is a democratic society. That's the strategy."

Forgive me, if you've heard or read me making this point previously, but that's not a strategy. That's a goal. A strategy is a game plan for achieving a goal.

Bush went on to note that he has changed tactics on the ground-by moving troops from one area to another. This has led to less violence in one area but more in another. This was not responsive to Raddatz's query. Tactics are what you use to make a strategy happen. Bush didn't seem to know the difference between the two.

Raddatz pressed him and said that Bush had not answered her question about his strategy. "Sounded like the question to me," he said.

If the commander in chief cannot talk more articulately about his strategy for winning an elective war he initiated, the problem is serious. It's become a truism tossed about by partisan Democrats looking to score political points, but it actually is true: Bush has little to offer but stay-the-course-ism. And he shows no signs of considering other options. His plan once was rather simply stated: The United States would train Iraqi security forces and when the Iraqis can take over the United States would leave. But as sectarian violence spreads-and the security forces become part of the conflict-that basic plan becomes thinner by the day.

Let's compare Bush with Sen. Joseph Biden, the Delaware Democrat. A few days after Bush's press conference, Biden published an op-ed article in The Washington Post that reiterated a plan for Iraq that he had previously developed with Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. I am not endorsing the plan, but here's what was refreshing about it: It was a plan. It had five points. It was internally consistent. It was an effort to deal with the dilemmas at hand. The Biden-Gelb plan calls for a unified but decentralized Iraq with Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis essentially controlling their own regions. A central government would be in charge of the really important national responsibilities: protecting the country and divvying up the oil revenue. (The Sunnis, who generally live in areas not loaded with oil, would be guaranteed a share of the pot.) The plan has a reconstruction component, which includes a massive jobs program, and calls for withdrawing most U.S. troops by the end of 2007.

It may or may not be the right plan, but it's a plan. After reading the op-ed, I could not help but wonder, why can't Bush describe a plan of his own in such concrete terms?

Bush's partner in his plan-less Iraq project-Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki-doesn't inspire great confidence either, at least not when he's granting an interview to an American cable network through an interpreter. Speaking with CNN's Wolf Blitzer a few days ago , Maliki said, "The violence is not increasing.... We're not in a civil war. In Iraq, we'll never be in a civil war."

It's understandable that the leader of a nation near (or in) civil war would not want to acknowledge in public that his country is on the brink. But to say the violence is not increasing? Americans ought to hope Maliki is not imitating Bush's previous practice of insisting progress is under way whatever the reality may be.

But Bush is the problem-at least, our problem-not Maliki. I sense that more and more conservatives are unnerved by Bush's stewardship of the war they wanted. On a television show this past weekend, I asked conservative commentator Linda Chavez and the Weekly Standard's Matthew Continetti if the absence of any meaty Bush plan for Iraq discomforted them. "It does worry me, David," Chavez responded. "As a supporter of the war in Iraq, it does worry me. I think it worries Matthew, too. I mean, I think everybody recognizes we do not have enough troops. The question isn't pulling troops out. We need more troops, not fewer."

Continetti predicted that more Republicans in Congress might start calling for the same-after the elections and if they retain control of the House. That would be a true profile in courage. Continetti was essentially accusing GOPers of playing political games at the expense of American and Iraqi lives.

In the meantime, the plan-free war continues, and the Bush-backers mainly duck that uncomfortable issue: whether this war is too much for the man who launched it. That does appear to be the big elephant in the room. And it seems that even conservatives and Republicans are finding it difficult to ignore its smell.

(David Corn writes The Loyal Opposition twice a month for TomPaine.com . Corn is also the Washington editor of The Nation and is the author of The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception. Read his blog at www.davidcorn.com)


3. Feeling Morally, Intellectually Confused? -- by Keith Olbermann

The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.

Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis—and the sober contemplation—of every American.

For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence -- indeed, the loyalty -- of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants -- our employees -- with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as “his” troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.

It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile it is right and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.

In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld’s speechwriter was adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis. For in their time, there was another government faced with true peril—with a growing evil—powerful and remorseless.

That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the “secret information.” It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s -- questioning their intellect and their morality.

That government was England’s, in the 1930’s.

It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England.

It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all treaties and accords.

It knew that the hard evidence it received, which contradicted its own policies, its own conclusions — its own omniscience -- needed to be dismissed.

The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth.

Most relevant of all — it “knew” that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile, at best morally or intellectually confused.

That critic’s name was Winston Churchill.

Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.

History — and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England — have taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty — and his own confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the man, but that the office can also make the facts.

Thus, did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy.

Excepting the fact, that he has the battery plugged in backwards.

His government, absolute -- and exclusive -- in its knowledge, is not the modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis.

It is the modern version of the government of Neville Chamberlain.

But back to today’s Omniscient ones.

That, about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this: This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely.

And, as such, all voices count -- not just his.

Had he or his president perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience — about Osama Bin Laden’s plans five years ago, about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago, about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one year ago — we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their “omniscience” as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact, plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris.

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire “Fog of Fear” which continues to envelop this nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have — inadvertently or intentionally — profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer’s New Clothes?

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused the United States of America?

The confusion we -- as its citizens— must now address, is stark and forbidding.

But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our flag. Note -- with hope in your heart — that those earlier Americans always found their way to the light, and we can, too.

The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought.

And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country faces a “new type of fascism.”

As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that -- though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.

This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed.

Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble tribute, I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow.

But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew everything, and branded those who disagreed: “confused” or “immoral.”

Thus, forgive me, for reading Murrow, in full:

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” he said, in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.”

And so good night, and good luck.

(Comments? Email KOlbermann@msnbc.com Watch “ Countdown ” each weeknight at 8 p.m. ET on MSNBC TV)


4. There Is Silence in the Streets; Where Have All the Protesters Gone? -- by Andrew Rosenthal

It was almost painful the other night to hear Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young sing about a war whose purpose Americans never really understood, started by a president who didn’t tell the truth and then waged the war ineptly. And that was before they sang about Iraq.

The audience rose for Neil Young’s blast at George Bush, “Let’s Impeach the President,” and sang the words displayed on a huge TV screen, even the 20-something in front of us who had been text-messaging throughout the concert. That same screen also displayed thumbnail photos of slain soldiers while a counter ran up the most recent toll. It takes longer than you might think to count to 2,600.

It was a surprisingly political moment for a rock concert in 2006. But when those four men sang their protest songs four decades ago, their lyrics echoed and personified a powerful political movement sweeping America. Now they are entertainment, something to leave behind in the concert hall.

There were a few political booths outside the Theater at Madison Square Garden. But the concert-tour T-shirt salesmen were getting all the business. The most noticeable sound was the cellphones being restarted by those few who had bothered to turn them off during the concert.

This, perhaps, is the ultimate difference between the Vietnam generation and the Iraq generation: When you hear Young and Company sing of “four dead in Ohio,” their Kent State anthem, it’s hard to imagine anyone on today’s campuses willing to face armed troops. Is there anything they care about that much?

Student protesters helped drive Lyndon Johnson — in so many ways a powerful, progressive president — out of office because of his war. In 2004, George W. Bush — in so many ways a weak, regressive president — was re-elected despite his war. And the campuses were silent.

There was a brief burst of protest when America first invaded Iraq. But if there is a college movement against the war, it’s hiding pretty well. Vietnam never had the moral clarity that the 9/11 attacks provided to this generation’s war. But in Iraq that proved to be a false clarity, and a majority of Americans now say they oppose the war and no longer trust Mr. Bush’s leadership of it.

But because there is no draft — a fact that Graham Nash noted sardonically on Sunday night — no young person has to fear being conscripted into the fight. It is hard to escape the conclusion that Americans find it much easier to stay silent when there is no shared sacrifice.

This war is also largely hidden from American eyes. Unlike Vietnam, when journalists were free to witness and record combat operations, the Pentagon controls access to American troops in Iraq and the images that come with it. The Pentagon banned press coverage of the flag-draped coffins returning home from Iraq. The president refused to attend the funerals of soldiers. Even the cost of this war was tucked from the very start into “supplemental bills” that magically don’t count toward the budget deficit.

The pressure to be silent is great. This week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld compared critics of Mr. Bush’s Iraq policy to those who appeased Adolf Hitler. And antiwar protesters are told they’re un-American, cowardly and lending aid and comfort to terrorists.

But in the 1960’s and 1970’s, antiwar protesters were told they were un-American, cowardly and lending aid and comfort to Communists. Then, the personal and national cost of war grew so great that public outrage drowned out this sort of propaganda. Now, people find protesters vaguely embarrassing and don’t want to make too much noise. Outside the concert hall, a soldier who served in Iraq and now opposes the war said he wished Neil Young could be more “subtle.”

Mr. Young’s call for impeachment is over the top, and it’s certainly not subtle. But the anti-Vietnam protesters were not exactly masters of subtlety either. Bloggers say there is an antiwar movement online. Perhaps, but it takes crowds to get America’s attention. Just look at the immigration debate.

The noisy, annoying, unsubtle leaders of the protest lent courage to the rest of us to cut school and march in a few rallies.