micah holmquist's irregular thoughts and links

The best you can do

Last night’s 60 Minutes featured a stunning revelation from former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith; during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Bush that it was possible that the U.S. would not find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

OK, to be fair, Feith does not actually say this on camera, but 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft does say, Feith "says even Rumsfeld conceded privately that the U.S. might not find any weapons of mass destruction on the ground. And he told the president so in a memo that outlined all of the things that could possibly go wrong."

It isn't clear if Kroft is getting this from his conversation with Feith and/or Feith's soon to be released book War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism (Harper). I suppose Kroft could be engaging in mischaracterization here, but I can find no evidence that Feith or anyone else has disputed this characterization, which if true is damning. If George and Rummy did not know that they would find WMDs in Iraq then there can be absolutely no doubt that the Bush Administration dishonestly justified the invasion and occupation of Iraq, not that there should be any even before this.

In a world that made sense, a congressional committee or two would immediately subpoena Feith and Rumsfeld and get them to answer questions under oath. Rumsfeld would be asked if had written such a memo or expressed such thoughts and, if so, who would have read the memo or heard him express such thinking. Feith would be asked if such a memo really did exist and who would have seen the memo. Then this committee would gather all named by Rumsfeld and Feith and they would asked if they had seen this memo or heard Rumsfeld say that there was possibility that weapons of mass destruction would not be found in Iraq.

Just as detectives do not wait for months to start conducting an investigation after a crime, these committees should be able to do all of this with great speed. Maybe there would be some legal delays, but that would a cop out if used to justify moving like a Hare at the big Hare vs. Tortoise race. After this is done, I suspect I would start to seriously contemplate whether I should make a onetime only exception to opposition to capital punishment.

But none of this is going to happen. Democrats, who sadly probably make up the vast majority of people who even claim to be opposed to the Bush Administration, do not have much interest in this story. I can find no mention of Feith on the front pages of AlterNet, Daily Kos or Eschaton. There is a post on The Huffington Post on Feith (Lionel Beehner, April 7) but it has nothing about WMDs.

I have a theory that if Bush came out and said, "Yes, I lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and I thought you were all fucking stupid for not picking up on it" that we would be plunged into a national conversation on whether or not it is acceptable for a U.S. President to say "fucking" in public. And if Bush left out that particular profanity, almost no attention would be paid to the statement.

Democrats apparently will take just about anything from Bush, and they will do the same from their own presidential candidates. Over the weekend, Barack Obama campaign spokesperson Jen Psaki said, "John McCain is not a warmonger and should not be described as such" (quoted in AP, April 5). Actually, "warmonger" is an objective description of McCain and people of decency and intelligence would be wary to support the presidential candidacy of anybody who did not agree with this assessment. Suffice to say, the major liberals sites mentioned above are even less interested in this matter than they are in Feith.

Democrats won't stand up to the Bush Administration just as they will not stand up to advocates of Team Bush’s war(s).

I am not sure which is worse.

News related to Iraq

Sources tell me the assault/demolition of Basra and Sadr City is scheduled to begin as soon as U.S. and Iraqi military officials are done consulting with Janet Reno.

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Iraqis are demonstrating against Maliki and calling for him to resign (The Real News, March 28), but to no effect. These people are excessively ambitious for an American style democracy.

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Great Britain’s Ministry of Defense said yesterday that its Real British Heroes tortured nine Iraqis in September 2003 and that one of these Iraqis died (Kim Sengupta, The Independent, March 28). In other words, Gitmo detainees should stop complaining.

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In light of Dick Cheney's infamous "so" comment last week that he explained meant he did not care what people in the U.S. of A. think of U.S. policy towards Iraq and Dana Perino explaining that Bush didn't care either, I found it a bit odd that Bush gave a speech yesterday trying to justify U.S. policy towards Iraq. Is this just an example of a totalitarian's prerogative to give speeches? Or does Bush actually enjoy coming across as an idiot while knowing that no professional journalist will come out and say this?

Better late than never

The U.S. military has a new program to provide Iraqis with public works jobs, such as in sanitation, with the aim of lessening the appeal of anti-occupation forces (Elena Becatoros, The Associated Press, January 2).

So apparently it took Uncle Sam nearly 70 months to think that maybe, just maybe, Iraqis might like paychecks and non-lethal drinking water.

Blackwater shopping

A Center for Constitutional Rights lawsuit against the Blackwater private military company alleges, amongst other things, that as many as one fourth of Blackwater guards in Baghdad "are chemically influenced by steroids or other judgment-altering substances," and that the company knows this (The Center for Constitutional Rights, November 27).

I was thus surprised when I couldn't find any baseball cards for sale at the Blackwater Proshop.

They would make such a great Christmas gift for my children. Each card would feature the glossy picture a different shooter while the back would have the statistics on the unarmed civilians they've done away with. Christmas memories are built on things such as this, I say. (Then again, I'm a romantic. Santa brought me the GI Joe Air Craft Carrier, perhaps the greatest gift I could ever receive, back in second grade.)

Blackwater does actually call its online store the Blackwater Proshop. It is full of such wonderful gifts for Christmas or any time of the year as a black long sleeve shirt with Blackwater written on it no fewer than four times.

Last week, on Wednesday, I was at a one stop shopping center when I saw a man who looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties wearing such a garment. I said something to him along the lines of, "I noticed your shirt. Do you by any chance work for Blackwater?"

He gave me a disgusted look and turned away, which perhaps was for the best. I hadn’t planned a follow up question to an affirmative answer. Maybe I would have discussed my idea for Blackwater run charter schools –where kids are free to one another if they can survive the teachers- but fear might just as likely have caught up with me and I would have decided not to mock him.

Still, his response seemed odd. If you do not want people to think that you might be in some way affiliated with Blackwater or would feel the need to bristle at a question about this matter, it might not be a good idea to wear a Blackwater shirt.

Elsewhere at the Proshop, you can get teddy bears wearing a Blackwater shirt. Anybody who buys one of these should have their picture and address added to a publicly accessible online registry so parents and other concerned citizens can keep an eye on them. Children are our most precious resources and we can ill afford to allow some sick and twisted freak to turn them into roid raging employees of Blackwater.

Dear Keith Olbermann,

Sources inside the White House tell me that your September 4 call for President George W. Bush to resign opened the eyes of the president and even provoked a comment. "I'll consider resigning when I see a guillotine above my eyes," Bush muttered to an aide.

As for your call for congress to deny Bush more war funding, the response from congress was, "yeah right."

What exactly paralyzation would prevent the Iraqi government from doing is unclear

The National Intelligence Council's new National Intelligence Estimate "Prospects for Iraq's Stability: Some Security Progress but Political Reconciliation Elusive" (August 2007) says Iraqi Prime Minster Jawad al-Maliki "will continue to benefit from recognition among Shia leaders that searching for a replacement could paralyze the government."

I assume that people are waiting until the Iraq occupation and war funding bill actually passes before they begin rioting.

Enjoy the good times of Tenet while you can

I am sick of hearing about George Tenet and some book he's authored. I concluded that he acting despicably as the CIA chief a long time ago and, unless something comes up that might alter that impression, I do not want to hear about him.

Of course, things will no doubt get worse before too long.

I rarely remember my dreams, but I am sure that I’ve been having nightmares about the day Donald Rumsfeld or Paul Wolfowitz comes out with a book. The media attention will be far greater and so will my desire to start poking a particular person with a sharp stick.

If I ever call Janet Parshall up...

Janet Parshall’s America is a great radio program featuring a delightful mix of conservative Christianity and right wing foreign policy. Listen to the program and you will find out that fossils prove that the Great Flood created the Grand Canyon and also that America can not afford to fail in Iraq and thus will not do so.

One thing that really does upset host Janet Parshall, and rightfully so, is when losers bring up WMDs and right. She will shut them right off and go on a long, less than historical, rant. Parshall is good at those, so it would be foolish of me to call in and talk about that, or anything else that puts a negative light on how wonderful the war on terror is going. So, instead, I think I would like to give her a ring to say:

Hello... Yes, it is an honor to speak with you Janet. You are truly doing God's work.

I don't understand why all these people have to criticize our president. Can't they see that he is doing a good job and nobody has attacked us since September 11th? I'm really afraid that Americans have forgotten their history and will spit on our returning heroes again just like they did in Vietnam.

Parshall would then thank me for being a great Christian patriot who doesn't fall for the lies of the mainstream media.

The only real question would be, would Parshall think I'm stupid?

Micah responds to something a great man has written

I try not to spend much time reading blogs dedicated to abusing, injuring and killing people as life is short even if you are not a stupid Iraqi, but sometimes I temptation gets two or three evil claws on me and I do. I certainly try to not bother responding to them, because doing so will not do any good. There is no room for dialogue as I do not understand their perspective, which is not for a lack of trying, and basically assume that they must be dishonest and/or stupid. But then sometimes I just give in...

Author, blogger, columnist, radio talk show host and former Reagan appointee Hugh Hewitt (January 24) is adamantly against the U.S. Senate passing a non-binding resolution against the surge/escalation/whatever exactly you want to call the plan from Bush that is just so certain to solve, at the very least, the most important problems of Iraq. Such a plan, Hewitt writes, will inspire "the enemy" and give it the extra bit of confidence needed to kill more of God's greatest people. (Fuck you Iraqis!)

This confuses me. I thought they were already so evil that they want to kill us all and that we have occupy Iraq to keep them from doing so. I thought they hated us because we exist and that nothing we could do had any effect on them, but hey, as I wrote above, I really do not understand the mindset of people who write stuff like this.

So anyway Hewitt –who keep in mind gets paid for this kind of material- is now passionately urging and encouraging others to urge Republican senators to filibuster any resolution that does not tell our troops they are doing a great job because they are doing what our great president tells them to do, or something. Although this is opposition to a resolution that would have no impact on U.S. foreign policy, the brilliant thinker knows the stakes are high (January 24):

At some point, all the Senators who are involved in the debate on the Anti-Surge resolution will have to face the light of history. If the surge succeeds, there malfeasance will be mere footnotes to history...

But if the surge fails and the war effort fails, history will wonder why these Senators went so out of their way to undermine their country effort at such a pivotal time. History will ask why they thought it was critical that they show to our enemies and our soldiers their lack of confidence and resolve.

In other words, if you disagree with plan, you should keep your mouth shut as nobody will care if you are wrong and, if you are right, it is your fault that you were right and America lost.

There is no room, in the outlook of Hewitt, for opposition to the occupation that is not against the great Americans and especially the great American troops. He appears very comfortable with this limit on political discourse.

I will concede that it is very possible that Hewitt is right about how people in the future will look at things. Hewitt, for one, will certainly look at it this way if the surge does not succeed and not be without influence in getting others to take a similar view, but the widespread support that once existed amongst the general public for invading and occupying Iraq should be all the proof one needs that that the public and the elites are, at least some of the time, idiots who deserve to be laughed at.

Wait, I'm sorry. I forgot, there are some people so stupid they still do not acknowledge this.

Hewitt's speculation about the future indicates a matter of fact confidence that the current opposition to the U.S. trying to run Iraq, and be extension other countries, will not last. Does what we know now justify his confidence? Given what happened the aftermath of the U.S. experience in Vietnam as well as the pitifully small anti-war movement that now exists in the country that can never stop talking about how great it is, I would say he does.

The question is, what can be done to change the situation so that Hewitt is wrong? On the theoretical level, people need to understand that the invasion and occupation of Iraq is not an aberrancy of U.S. foreign policy, but a period that easily goes along with the larger themes.

I wish I knew how to convey that in a way that significant numbers of people, i.e. a near majority if not a majority of the outright variety, would agree with.

I wish I even believed that was possible. Hewitt is at least angry about the resolution. The same can't be said for the major Democratic activist websites.

Given how much they pushed for Democrats to take control of congress and their widespread opposition to the troop increase, one would think that there would be outrage on sites like Daily Kos, Eschaton and MoveOn.org that the Democrats are only pressing for a nonbinding resolution. However, the frontpages of these sites reveals none, unless you count a Daily Kos post by MissLaura (January 25) that notes that a binding resolution is off the table without any interest in this how this came to be. Quite simply, there does not appear to be much interest in actually ending the occupation amongst online activist Democrats. When that is the opposition as it currently exists, what hope is there inside of the United States?