Roberta

The rightwing blogosphere and websites area all agog over National Guardgate starring Dan Rather. Teeming with righteous indignation, they're calling for his head, insisting upon his resignation from CBS over the Killian Memos. This after Rather mea culpa'd on the memos, saying he could no longer vouch for their veracity (No, he hasn't said they're forged, despite what the rest of the media likes to report).

Missed in all of this rightwing swill however, are two very simple facts. First of all, nothing in the Killian memos was actually false information. With the possible exception of the allegation that Bush didn't follow a direct order to get a physical, everything else is cooberated by other undisputed documents. Even the White House believes the content of the memos to be legitimate, as they've shown by their trotting out of Dan Bartlett to make excuses for his boss' behavior during that era.

Second, we seem to be missing some mea culpa from Fox, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, etc over the Swift Boat stories. These cable news organizations put up hour after hour of the Swift Boaters opining on and on about how Kerry didn't earn his medals. On Friday, the US Navy said Kerry earned all of his medals and procedures to award them were followed properly.

Dan Rather is the one journalist who's actually had the integrity and honesty to come forward and say he screwed up. Where's the integrity of Wolf Blitzer and Brit Hume on the Swift Boat story? Where's the front page coverage for Judy Woodruff and Bill O'Reilly on the front page of the Washington Post..pressuring them to resign for airing stories without checking them thoroughly first?

People are asking for the head of the one guy out there right now willing to come forward and try to get to the truth. Sadly, noone seems to care about the hours and hours of untruths aired by the cable "news" shows.

Republican senators Chuck Hagel (Nebraska) and Richard Lugar (Indiana) are expressing frustration at the Bush Administration's unwillingness to come clean with the American people about Iraq:

Hagel, a decorated U.S. Army veteran who served in Vietnam, said he is deeply skeptical about the claims of progress that President Bush and his advisers have made about Iraq. The Nebraskan compared "this mess" to the U.S. failures in Vietnam.

"We are in deep trouble," he warned.

Hagel chided "all these smart guys who got us in there (to Iraq) ... all the smart guys who said how easy this was going to be and who reassured us not to worry."

Lugar also weighed in:

Lugar chastised the "blithely optimistic people ... the

dancing-in-the-street crowd" in the Bush administration who assured Congress that casualties and costs would be low and that U.S. troops would be met as liberators.

"Now," said Lugar, "the nonsense of all of that is apparent. The lack of planning is apparent."

Lugar went on to read a letter he recieved from a Marine second lieutenant serving in Iraq which spelled out the very bleak issues the US military faces in Iraq.

Lugar and Hagel aren't alone in the GOP, either. Senator John McCain (Arizona) and Congressmen Doug Bereuter (Nebraska) have also expressed frustration and exasperation with Bush's inability to effectively deal with the problems in Iraq.

The Bush Administration is in for some big problems in Iraq...and they know it, despite lying to the American people about what's really going on. But Bush refuses to come clean with the electorate...because holding power is more important than actually doing his job.

From Media Matters:

CNN senior political analyst and American Enterprise Institute resident fellow Bill Schneider claimed that Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorist network "would very much like to defeat President [George W.] Bush" in November's presidential election. He then revived the much-repeated myth that terrorists determined the outcome of Spain's March election, saying: "But the question is: Can they pull off the same trick that they pulled off in Spain?"

When asked to comment on House Speaker Dennis Hastert's (R-IL) September 18 remark that the terrorists would prefer a Senator John Kerry presidency, Schneider echoed Hastert's sentiment.

From the September 19 edition of CNN Live Sunday:

SCHNEIDER: Well, I can guarantee you, they don't like George Bush. Do they think there's a difference? I think Osama bin Laden, the Al Qaeda network, who I am certain follow American politics, look at the messages coming out on their tapes. They seem to follow politics very closely. They would very much like to defeat President Bush. But the question is: Can they pull off the same trick that they pulled off in Spain? What Dennis Hastert said is, "They'd better not try that. It won't work here." And my guess is, he's right about that.

As Media Matters for America has noted, while little evidence exists suggesting that Al Qaeda has a preference regarding the upcoming presidential election, Reuters reported in March that a letter from an Egyptian group claiming a link to Al Qaeda stated that group supports President George W. Bush's reelection. Moreover, as MMFA has also explained (on July 15 and August 5), the assumption that terrorists sought successfully to bring about the defeat of Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar, a supporter of Bush and the Iraq war, is highly questionable.

Kevin adds: In what was arguably the greatest political flip-flop of all time President Bush first said, "The important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our Number One priority and we will not rest until we find him!" - Sept. 13, 2001. Then later he said, "I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and I really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." - March 13, 2002.

What possible reason could Osama bin Laden have for not preferring the guy who openly stated that he doesn't care, that it's not important and that it's not his priority to bring him to justice???

9/17/04 Press Conference with Scott McClellan:

Q I've got another question about women. In the last few public events, we've seen anti-Bush women treated rather roughly, physically. Does the President -- is he aware of the treatment of these demonstrators?

MR. McCLELLAN: I don't know what you're specifically referring to, Ed.

Q Well, one we saw a woman being led out by her hair, rather forcefully. Another one yesterday at Mrs. Bush's event.

MR. McCLELLAN: Those are questions I think you can direct to authorities. I don't know what you're specifically referring to.

Are you sure about that, Bob...er...Scott?

Conservative columnist Robert Novak indicates in his column today that a reelected Bush Administration will cut and run in Iraq:

Well-placed sources in the administration are confident Bush's decision will be to get out. They believe that is the recommendation of his national security team and would be the recommendation of second-term officials. An informed guess might have Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state, Paul Wolfowitz as defense secretary and Stephen Hadley as national security adviser. According to my sources, all would opt for a withdrawal.

Getting out now would not end expensive U.S. reconstruction of Iraq, and certainly would not stop the fighting. Without U.S. troops, the civil war cited as the worst-case outcome by the recently leaked National Intelligence Estimate would be a reality. It would then take a resolute president to stand aside while Iraqis battle it out.

The end product would be an imperfect Iraq, probably dominated by Shia Muslims seeking revenge over long oppression by the Sunni-controlled Baathist Party. The Kurds would remain in their current semi-autonomous state. Iraq would not be divided, reassuring neighboring countries -- especially Turkey -- that are apprehensive about ethnically divided nations.

In a nutshell, Novak is saying that Bush and his people have no idea what to do with Iraq. Apparently the sunshine they've been blowing up our backsides (despite massive evidence to the contrary) is nothing more than outright lying.

Novak is clearly uncomfortable with what he hears from the Bush people...yet complains about Kerry too. To Novak, Kerry not wanting to abandon the mess we've made in Iraq is no better than abandoning it.

It's pretty clear that conservatives and neoconservatives have absolutely no idea what to do with Iraq. Yet apparently Bush is ready to bail out, leaving Iraq into what will inevitably be a massive civil war. This completely irresponsible position leaves the US in a reprehensible foreign policy position. And worse, the conservatives and neoconservatives don't appear to be learning from this lesson. As Novak points out, David Brooks' August 29th New York Times Magazine piece that calls for "strengthening of nation states" and calling for a "multilateral nation building apparatus" seems to encourage invasions of other states.

Update:And Kos has the question of the day: "Where are the terrorist alerts?" Since W's poll numbers have improved, the terror alerts seem to have strangely dissapeared.

The Republicans are sounding the alarm in West Virginia.

The Republican National Committee sent out mailers last week to warn West Virginians that if Democrats are elected, the Bible will be banned and men will marry men.

This week? Republicans will be informing the citizens of West Virginia that if Kerry is elected, the US will be attacked by terrorists and will go to war based on trumped up intelligence.

(The quote in the header is Bill Murray from Ghostbusters, by the way)

There's a lot of buzz in the lefty blogosphere about the new book by linguist George Lakoff. I've been a big fan of Lakoff for about a year. I first heard Lakoff on Oregon Public Broadcasting radio while in my car. He was giving a commentary on the effective uses of political language by the Republicans. While listening to him I felt that someone had turned on a light switch in me. What he said made so much sense!

Lakoff talked about how Republicans "frame the debate". He talked about how Republicans tie certain words together, automatically putting the other side completely on the defensive. These words are set up in such a way as to pound on the other side..taking away from the actual meat of an issue...to point out some essentially meaningless thing...and distract the other side. He discussed how they stay on message with these words and phrases, and they stay disciplined with it...even in the face of being proven factually wrong time and again. He also discussed the how the Republican Party and conservative movements constantly work together with their media outlets.

Last week, Erasmus over at Centerfield talked about Lakoff. Today Kos has an extended look at Lakoff and his new book Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate--The Essential Guide for Progressives.

Howard Dean took advice from Lakoff and was able to effectively inject language into the debate that set the Republicans on their heels and gave Democrats and progressives the voice they were longing for. Lakoff's understanding of language and it's effective use is potentially key to the Democrats finding their voice as a whole. Kerry should have this guy on his speech writing team and helping him prepare for the debates.

... But, better late than never.

Finally (!!) some Republicans are starting to talk about the proverbial Pink Elephant in the living room that nobody wants to talk about. Namely, the worsening situation in Iraq. Kerry has been saying that Bush is hiding a plan to call up large numbers of more Guards and Reserves after the election. Ed Gillespie (Chair of the RNC) and other Bush partisans have claimed that Kerry is resorting to fear tactics. But, anyone following the situation both in Iraq as well as in our over-stretched military know that Bush has precious little choice. Only he wants to keep it under wraps because it doesn't jibe with his stump speech lies that everything in Iraq is peachy.

Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska said on CBS's Face the Nation,

"The fact is, we're in deep trouble in Iraq ... and I think we're going to have to look at some recalibration of policy."

Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona said on Fox News Sunday, "We made serious mistakes." He cited the toleration of massive looting in the immediate aftemath of Saddam's government crumbling and the failure to secure Iraq's borders, as well as having allowed insurgents to develop strongholds in the country. Of course that was all politically nice ways of saying that Bush and Rumsfeld "Cheneyed Up" be refusing to listen to those who told them going in that we'd need several hundred thousand troops to do the job right.

McCain said that a ground offensive is urgently needed to retake areas held by insurgents in places like Falluja. "We've got to take out the sanctuaries. We're going to have to sustain, tragically, some more casualties. Airstrikes don't do it; artillery doesn't do it. Boots on the ground do it," McCain said. "And the longer we delay ...the more difficult the challenge is going to be and the more casualties we will incur."

This is something that McCain and Kerry both understand well, having been in war themselves. And perhaps that is at the root of why Bush has allowed this mess to get so bad in the first place... he simply doesn't appreciate the sacrifices being made by our soldiers in the field. Why else would he allow Iraq to spiral downward into a morass while putting a happy face on the situation when speaking to Americans? He knew going in and has been told repeatedly in the months since invading that we simply didn't have enough troops to do the job.

More American casualties will indeed be tragic. And the blame falls squarely on Bush. But of course we all know that he won't accept responsibility for it. He's never accepted responsibility for any of his decisions that didn't pan out according to the fantasy world he lives in. But I diverge... there's more.

McCain said Bush had been "perhaps not as straight as maybe we'd like to see."

"I think the president is being clear. I would like to see him more clear."

Excuse me, Senator, but I'm not as stupid as you apparently believe me to be. If you would like to see Bush be "more clear" then, by definition, he isn't being clear now. Whatever happened to the man who launched the vaunted "Straight Talk Express"?

Republican Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, also Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, criticized the way that Bush has handled the reconstruction of Iraq while on ABC's This Week show. I don't know why this should surprise anyone. Bush made all kinds of reconstruction promises to Afghanistan which haven't materialized. Anyway, Lugar pointed out that Bush has only spent $1 billion of the $18.4 billion that Congress allocated for reconstruction in Iraq. This would be the very same Congressional allocation for which Bush and Cheney have been trying to paint Kerry as a flip-flopper for how he voted on it. Now if it were really all that important to Bush or Cheney, don't you think they'd have spent more than a paltry 5% of it by now? Oh... that's right. :::shhhhhh::: We're supposed to be stupid.

The most interesting statement came from McCain's fellow Arizona Republican Senator John Kyle on Face The Nation.

"Allowing the Iraqis to make the decisions not to go into some of these sanctuaries, I think, turns out to have not been a good decision, which we're going to have to correct now by going in with our Marines and Army divisions."

Um... you mean the same Iraqis that Bush allegedly turned "full sovereignty" over to in June? No need to answer that, Senator. I suspect you said a great deal more than you intended to. But, never fear. The truth will set you free. Besides, it's gotta be tough covering for Bush on so many different issues. I don't blame you for letting that one slip out. You're only human, after all.

From Susan over at Random Thoughts: Unfair and Unbalanced

This article has to be read to be believed. And after you read it, you still won't believe it. The election in the heartland will be based on something like this: It doesn't matter if you are unemployed and facing homelessness, it doesn't matter if you are facing foreclosure on your home, it doesn't matter that if you get another job it doesn't pay a living wage, it doesn't matter if you've lost your health insurance, it doesn't matter if your kids face the prospect of fighting an illegitimate war. Nothing matters. All that counts is if some phony whose administration has worsened you and your family's lives invokes "Jesus is my personal savior," he gets your vote. All I say to that is you fools prove P.T. Barnum right.

I couldn't agree more. And I say that both as a voter and as a Christian. What part of "as you do unto the least of these, so you do unto me" do these churchgoers not understand? If Bush claimed to be the Jolly Green Giant, would they believe that too?

Doug Bandow, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, wrote a fantastic piece over at ReasonOnline called Whose Fault? Accountability According to the GOP. Here he confronts head-on the intellectually vapid GOP mantra that the problems in Iraq are all the fault of "the media."

The failure to understand why the American people have turned against the war demonstrates that the administration and its allies are simultaneously arrogant and tone-deaf. While conservatives routinely denounced President Bill Clinton for failing to accept responsibility for his actions, the GOP now is taking the cult of the victim to new heights.

Bush Administration rhetoric of mushroom clouds, bioterrorism, unmanned aerial planes that could hit America, etc. weren't created by "the media." The American media didn't falsely promise that Iraqi's would shower our troops with rose petals or that the occupation would pay for itself. The media didn't predict that our troop strength in Iraq would fall to 30,000 by last summer or that our traditional allies would be falling all over themselves to jump on the victory bandwagon.

"Once we have victory in Baghdad, all the critics will look like fools," said Cheney. Not quite. And don't blame the media.

It's not just Iraq, either. By diverting massive resources away from Afghanistan, and to Iraq, the Bush administration short-changed operations in Afghanistan. The "government" of Ahmed Karzai is little more than a glorified Mayorship of Kabul. Other War Lords refuse to aknowledge the "federal government" of Karzai. Foreign investors shun Afghanistan significantly more than they did under the Taliban regime, pointing towards a very bleak and bloody future for the Afghani's. And it's all tracable to the Bush administration's lust for Iraq. Not only is the media not to blame for that, they aren't even covering it much.

A conservative Independent friend of mine has sent me numerous emails blaming Kerry (and McCain) for the brutalization of the Hmong ethnic minority in Vietnam. The basic argument is that Kerry and McCain are responsible for this because they helped normalize relations between the governments of Vietnam and the United States. Normally I seriously doubt that the Religious Right would care. But, the Hmong happen to be overwhelmingly Protestant Christians. So the conclussion is that they are being brutalized because they are Christians - ignoring the historical fact that the Hmong were brutalized before they ever converted to Christianity. Therefore, so the logic goes, it is a Christian duty to oppose John Kerry. There are a multitude of problems with that point of view. But, what's interesting is that Christians are being persecuted in Iraq right now.

Christians are being brutalized and Christian churches are being bombed; 40,000 Christians have fled to Syria, an ugly anti-American dictatorship. Journalists aren't to blame for these problems.

One can search any of the usual Freeper hangouts online and find numerous references to the Hmong and Kerry. But, try to find even one about Bush and the persecuted Christians in Iraq.

The media has done nothing more than report on the results of Bush administration policies in Iraq.