The title idea is from a constant refrain from Atrios.
Another anniversary of 9/11 and another round of people saying, “What were you doing on that day?” I can tell you one thing most people won’t be saying: “How can we use this attack that was orchestrated mostly by Saudis and ordered by the Saudi leader of a terrorist organization based mainly in Afghanistan as leverage to wage a pointless war on Iraq so that our President can finally show his family that his dick is indeed bigger than his father’s?”
Of course you wouldn’t say that. Which is why any random dumbfuck off the street would be a better President than the Shrub, who did in fact immediately start looking for a way to use the death of 3,000 innocent Americans as a way to dupe the American public into getting into a war he was dying to start. Remember, this meeting took place while the smoke was still in the air and rescue workers were trying desperately to find survivors.
“The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, ‘I want you to find whether Iraq did this.’ Now he never said, ‘Make it up.’ But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this.
“I said, ‘Mr. President. We’ve done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There’s no connection.’
“He came back at me and said, “Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there’s a connection.’ And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report.”
Clarke continued, “It was a serious look. We got together all the FBI experts, all the CIA experts. We wrote the report. We sent the report out to CIA and found FBI and said, ‘Will you sign this report?’ They all cleared the report. And we sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the National Security Advisor or Deputy. It got bounced and sent back saying, ‘Wrong answer. … Do it again.’
“I have no idea, to this day, if the president saw it, because after we did it again, it came to the same conclusion. And frankly, I don’t think the people around the president show him memos like that. I don’t think he sees memos that he doesn’t– wouldn’t like the answer.”
This is why it’s hard for me to give enough of a shit about the latest round of war propaganda being issued from General Petraeus. Like Atrios says, this war being a product of Bush’s ego means that regardless of what is actually happening in Iraq with this “surge”, it will be spun as working just enough to justify staying there in hopes it might work even more, period. And less than “just enough” would be reason to pull out and shrivel the White House phallus and any more would be reason to pull out and shrivel the White House phallus. And Bush must maintain the illusion to himself, day in and day out, that his is the might phallus, and that illusion can’t be maintained if he has to pull out of Iraq.
69 Responses to “Leaving is losing”
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Your post reminds me that yesterday I noticed that the new lingo is now “draw down” the troops rather than “withdraw.” This is especially the case when talking about a “premature draw down.” Wouldn’t want to talk about premature withdrawal now would we?
Thanks for being so predictable. I was writing a post on 9/11 and needed a nutroot link and lo and behold! Here it is.
Go to hell, sharon.
sharon,why don’t you go and suck your beloved president’s cock?Maybe he’ll finally be inpeached!
Woot! Debate skilz on display!
Sharon-
Where’s Osama?
And why is Hamid Karzai pleading for help because the Taliban is once again on the rise and threatening to overwhelm and over take Afghanistan, again.
And we’ve empowered them so much that they are taking over the NWFP of Pakistan.
Bush and Iraq is Osama’s greatest recruitment tool. And i believe the 9/11 Commission Report also stated that fact. You might want to read it http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/index.htm
Tee hee, read sharon’s post that links to this one. She’s so upset! There used to be flags, flags everywhere! Then all you mean liberals refused to support the President’s invasion of Iraq! You must love Saddam you Saddam lovers! What happened to my flags?
do the world a favor, sharon, and off yourself.
This is my sisters b-day. She’s 42 today. My cousin would have been 48 today.
Video filmed Sept 7, 2001 NYC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IhDW18rxyY
Not only is Osama Bin Laden still scampering around Waziristan, his funders in Saudi Arabia are still at large, and we don’t even know who was behind the Anthrax attacks.
Unimpressed I am.
Give poor Sharon a break. She needs those flags without them she doesn’t know where to go, she needs a leader because then she knows where to follow. The fact that a flag alone does not show the way, or that a leader can betray his followers is not something that she is prepared to deal with in her limited world. She needs to rail at us because if she railed at Bush and his cronies and their lies and casual evil then she has to admit that she is lost without a compass. Pity her as she stands in her darkness with nowhere to go and nothing to do but rail at those who have a path and a flashlight.
If Bush pulls out of Iraq then he has to admit that his brother and father are smarter than he is, he has to admit that just giving up drinking doesn’t make you any the less a drunkard. He just gets drunk on other people’s suffering.
There’s something particularly ironic about the barking mad conspirationists (IslamoMexicoFascist are going to conquer Europe/America by overbreeding White Christians!) of the Right calling the reality-based community the ‘nutroots’.
You know what our gov’t is doing to help now? Not only do they show those highly offensive commercials with the kids asking “should I go to the neighbors?” letting you know it’s okay to talk about terrorist attacks, but now they’ve got some poor mother of a soldier killed in Iraq bleating about what a noble sacrifice her son made, and how we are really making a difference in Iraq and we’re not going to lose, unless those crazy people who pay attention to reality make us pull out before the job is done. Then her son’s sacrifice will be worthless.
OF COURSE she’s going to say the party line. Her son was killed. She HAS to believe it was for something more than the enrichment of Cheney and War President’s ego. She has to believe that these people didn’t lie and that Iraq attacked us.
Otherwise…if her son died for chickenhawk, refuse-to-serve-niks ego trips…how could she live with that?
She’d turn into Cindy Sheehan.
Sharon, did you ever fly or display a flag BEFORE 9/11?
Jingoistic lunatic.
Sharon, I find your refusal to remember the victims of 9/11 on this day to be particulary dishonorable. They deserve remembrance, not exploitation. By ignoring them, you’re profaning the memory of their murders.
So, tell me, where’s Osama? The man who murdered 3.000 US citizens?
w00t, I got a shoutout in a sharon update!
“Sharon, did you ever fly or display a flag BEFORE 9/11?”
Before 9/11, sharon was completely obsessed by The Clenis and how god finally gave America a righteous president, someone worthy of that sacred office, who would finally bring honesty and dignity to the presidency of The Greatest Nation on Earth.
Now that Bush/Cheney have the blood of
thousands,tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands on their hands, we don’t hear so much about that any more…***
“OF COURSE she’s going to say the party line. Her son was killed. She HAS to believe it was for something more than the enrichment of Cheney and War President’s ego. She has to believe that these people didn’t lie and that Iraq attacked us.”
That woman can always take comfort in the knowledge that her son helped inflate the Mighty Presidential Codpiece, which should be reward enough for any True American Patriot…
I don’t understand why people who still support this war –and also lament the first ten minutes of “Born on the 4th of July” that was the US right after 9/11– aren’t serving their country overseas.
I’ve got a 43 year-old sister who’s in Iraq now.
It’s not that I actually believe one has to “suit up or shut up.” But, Sharon, how come you’re not ashamed that you haven’t?
Sharon makes me laugh, because she refuses to admit that there are many, many Iraq/Afghanistan/Vietnam/Korean/World War II veterans, throughout the country, not just in San Francisco, or in California, hundreds, if not thousands, who are against this war.
My exhusband, a Vietnam Vet, was one of them. May he rest in peace.
Hey, damnit. Those flags were pretty.
Too bad they no longer stand for freedom and justice and that the American way is now one of
strike firstpreemptive war.I know I shouldn’t, but this particularly… entertained? Saddened?
I have to ask… what debate? There is no point being debated sharon (if you’re still reading). You made an assertion that you didn’t back up or justify, and somebody called you on it. Then you mock their debate skills?
There is no debate. Certainly not one you started. For it to be a debate you would have had to start with more than an insult, and maybe even done something like… I dunno… provide evidence, or at least justification. You just insulted and kept insulting. That is not debate, that is shouting and being incredibly childish. But you know, I guess you’re just following the example of your dear leader.
“Sharon, I find your refusal to remember the victims of 9/11 on this day to be particulary dishonorable.”
She probably feels just like Little Annie Coulter about those disgusting 9/11 widows, wallowing in grief and working their husband’s deaths like a pimp works a whore.
Or maybe she’s just so overjoyed by the possibilities for political power that 9/11 gave to the Reichwing that she sees the dead of 9/11 as merely a means to an end and otherwise unimportant…
Either way, it don’t look too good for the sharons of the world.
But hey, at least nobody got a blowjob out of it…
Ginmar, sit down. You’re blocking my view of all the pretty flags.
As the Pretzeldent and all the Republicans running to replace the codpiece have said, Osama is not a big deal. We’re not really concerned about him. I mean, come on, why should we try to capture him when we’ve got that pretty embassy to guard in Iraq? IT”S got pretty flags on it.
9/11 is about coming together with flags and car magnets in one united prayer of praise for the Glorious Legacy of the Codpiece of Mission Accomplished. Wave your flag.
Stop thinking about the people in the WTC, the Pentagon, and that field in Pennsylvania and the fact that those behind those crime have never been brought to justice.
Stop thinking about the Saudis that hijacked the planes and the unknown Saudis that funded them. They were Muslims–that’s good enough. We like the Saudi Muslims–they’re royal and rich–and hate the Iraq/ni Muslims. We have always been at war with Oceania.
Just stop thinking and wave your flag! Really. Do you think actually serving in Iraq means anything? If you came back and don’t support the war, then you don’t really count as a veteran, a patriot, or even an American.
Just stop thinking and wave the flag!
My dad, a veteran of WWII and the “greatest generation” and all that was disgusted by the US going into Iraq as a so-called response to 9/11. He was leery about Afghanistan, but felt it was appropriate.
When the war machine turned to Iraq, i heard regularly about just how appalled he was that this was happening.
I observe 9/11 by remembering all those who’ve lost their lives and mourning what this government has done in their names.
and as an aside: I frigging love the “impeach the fucker” tag.
I’ve been avoiding the whole 9/11 Remembrance thing. Haven’t we been wallowing in a mix of self-pity and anger over it for six years now? It’s been said before, but it’s worth saying again; a 9/11(approximately 3,000 dead)occurs every couple of months in Iraq.
Our young men and young women have been sent on a mission to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. All the King’s horses and all the King’s men….
I observe 9/11 by remembering the day and the moment and the shock and the look on face of my father-in-law’s nurse who was there that day. I remember the outpouring of sympathy for the victims, the rush of relief when I realized how many were coming in late that day because it was the election and the first day of school. I remember the tremendous heroism of individuals as well as the fear and shock visible on faces in the crowds. I remember being glued to the set but how I had to behave normally when my son got home from school. I remember trying to explain it to a 96 year old and not understanding it myself.
I observe 9/11 by remembering the day.
Yes, but those people don’t have that Magical American Citizenship that makes your life instrinsically more valuable than people of any other citizenship.
And really, those people are also dark-skinned and haven’t accepted Jesus as their personal saviour, so that’s three strikes against them - practically worthless human beings, right there. I estimate that the average Iraqi is worth 1/9 of an American, and you should adjust your numbers accordingly.
(For those in the cheap, irony-free seats, I am very much being facetious.)
Amanda, I have to disagree with focusing so exclusively on Bush’s private Iraq obsession.
“Regime change” had been US policy since Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act into law in 1998. The entire political establishment was obsessed with Iraq. And the reaction to 9/11 went on more or less in lockstep among both Republicans (who controlled the House) and Democrats (who, until January 2003, controlled the Senate).
Only Russ Feingold voted against the USA PATRIOT Act in the Senate. Congressperson Barbara Lee was the only person in either house who voted against the authorization of the use of force after 9/11.
Key Democrats in both houses supported the Iraq War in October 2002. And the Democratic leadership of both houses of Congress still supports the war.
Moreover, as scholars like Andrew Bacevich have suggested, the roots of the Bush administration’s war on Iraq go back decades and grew out of the bipartisan foreign policy consensus.
So while Bush’s private obsessions may have been a key catalyst for this war, this war couldn’t have happened without a lot of support from the entire DC establishment and a lot of help–much of it continuing still–from both sides of the aisle in Congress.
What kills me is that not only has everyone’s grief been used as a reason for a completely unrelated war, but that that war has taken resources from the actual war we’re fighting against the ones responsible and those that helped them. And I hate that to people like Sharon, the concept that I can be 100% for fighting Afghanistan and the Tailban and 100% against fighting the Iraq war is uncomprehensible and unpatriotic.
Sharon -
Lookee what George Will wrote
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/10/AR2007091002065.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
We lost Iraq the moment we invaded
Still, though, George Will’s an asshole. You, too, Ben.
“Lookee what George Will wrote”
sharon and the 25-Percenters: “That traitorous defeatocrat George Will! We knew he’d sell out this country at the drop of a hat! We must hunt him down and purge him from the Glorious Conservative Revolution!!! I hope he’ll be happy in a cell next to Jane Fonda and John Kerry…”
Remember, you’re a conservative until you say/think the wrong thing. Then you’re a librul…
mass - “Still, though, George Will’s an asshole. You, too, Ben.”
While almost everyone would agree George Will is an an asshole, why the hate on Ben? What he said is the truth, however unpleasant it might be.
There are a lot of “Americans” who had a hard-on to get Iraq before GWB, just like there have been a lot who’ve wanted to get Iran.
All any of them have been looking for is a “good” excuse to do what they already wanted to do for a long time…
BTW, that picture at the top of the little girl crying makes me want to vomit.
Which, under the circumstances, is probably entirely appropriate…
Ben Alpers–
That’s crap. There’s a big difference between attempting to isolate a nation because of its government and invading and occupying it. Equating the two is something that the wingnuts dishonestly do, in order to “prove” that Bush’s policies were no different from Clinton’s. They didn’t say so back in 2003, of course, but they love to say so now.
Democrats signed on to the Patriot Act out of a perceived need to act quickly to defend against further attacks. That was a mistake, but an understandable one. Since then, the party has fought against the most objectionable parts of the law, while the Republicans have fought to expand it. And I can’t fault the Democrats at all for voting to use force against the Taliban– I still think that was the right decision.
Now you’re just lying. Most congressional Democrats opposed the Iraq War from the start, and Democrats have consistently and overwhelmingly voted to end the war for quite some time now. The leadership, especially Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, has fought to end the war, and congress passed a measure that would have mandated a timetable for withdrawal back in April. Bush vetoed the measure, and without Republican support Democrats could not override the veto.
The Democrats are not the problem. There some who have been reluctant to oppose the war, but only a few. The problem is the Republicans, who planned and executed the war, and who use obstructionist tactics to put off the end of the war. And by attacking the wrong people, you help them.
I agree with Ben Alpers. But I’m kind of an asshole.
mass I don’t disagree with your statement about will posterior affecting his entier self … I jsut wanted sharon to see more conservatives falling by the way side.
“… I jsut wanted sharon to see more conservatives falling by the way side.”
When William F. Buckley said something similar a while back, it was treated by the wingnuts as if their Alzheimer’s-affected grandpa had said something embarrassing at a party. They pretended he hadn’t said it and went on with the business of tarring the Left.
The same thing will happen to Will and anybody else on the Right who dares question Commander Codpiece…
MikeEss
Ya think they have enough Alzheimers dedicated nursing homes to house all their currently afflicted and soon to be diagnosed?
(I wrote that and shivers went down my spine … sounds like the societ union)
clytemnestra, I figure they’ll be able to ignore the right-wing naysayers until the “stab in the back” narrative takes firm hold.
Then the naysayers and the true believers can join hands together and pretend that it was always a noble cause that was derailed by the Traitorous Left.
Conservatism will live on, untainted by defeat or discontent to sucker more followers for the next cycle…
Some crazy Christofascist had his piece in the paper today shifitng the blame for 9-11 on Clinton. Here it is:
Sure enough, some dummies don’t even know that Bush had at least 31-day warning about an attack and the Texas Tyrant did nothing.
Here is another one of the Christofascists favorites: “You oppose the Iraq War, then you oppose the War On Terror, just like the traitors, the Dixie Chicks!”
As usual, Sharon managed to make 9/11 all about what it meant to her, as if no one else matters outside her little world. How self-centered can one be?
As George Carlin pointed out more than a decade ago, apropos to Bush 41 and Desert Storm, how pathetic is it that we as a nation have to use the sexual slang of a thirteen-year-old boy to describe our foreign policy?
We’re not gonna pull out. We’re gonna go all the way…
I want my country back.
That’s crap. There’s a big difference between attempting to isolate a nation because of its government and invading and occupying it. Equating the two is something that the wingnuts dishonestly do, in order to “prove” that Bush’s policies were no different from Clinton’s. They didn’t say so back in 2003, of course, but they love to say so now.
The “Iraq Liberation Act” did not “attempt to isolate” Iraq. It made the overthrow of the Iraqi government the declared policy of the U.S.
Now there is still a big difference between aiding groups in a country that seek to overthrow a government (which is what the Clinton administration signed onto) and invading that country. But the step taken by the ILA was a big step toward invasion. It is not the usual policy of the U.S. to call for the overthrow of legitimate regimes abroad (even legitimate but vile ones). The groups aided by the ILA included the Iraqi National Congress, led by Ahmed Chalabi, which advocated for invasion (in part using our tax money. And the ILA was explicitly cited as precedent in the October 2002 AUMF that was, of course, passed by both houses of Congress, including the Democratic-controlled Senate.
I never said most Democrats in Congress supported the war, I said the Democratic leadership supporting the war (as you correctly quoted me before ignoring the quotation). I stand by what I said. Dick Gephardt, House Minority leader in 2002, voted for the AUMF, as did Tom Daschle, the Senate Majority leader. Turning to the current leadership, in 2002, Sen. Reid voted to authorize the war, while Rep. Pelosi voted against it. But neither has acted to end the war in their current posts. In fact, Pelosi took the lead in taking both defunding and impeachment off the table before Congress even met in January.
But even if you don’t want to recognize that key Democrats have long supported this war, you have to at the very least acknowledge that invading Iraq was advocated for most of the 1990s by various neoconservatives, most notably the Project for a New American Century, and that George W. Bush was not particularly involved in this advocacy before he came to office.
The Bush administration has been truly awful in any number of ways, including their war on Iraq. Bush will be leaving office in January 2009. But it’s very important for us not to pretend that the war on Iraq was his and his alone. A lot of the other folks who dreamed it up and supported it will still have powerful roles in our political life. And since many of them seem to have other targets in mind (and since we will almost certainly still be in Iraq), it’s pretty important not to think that the problem will go away once Bush leaves the White House.
“Bush will be leaving office in January 2009″
God willing and no martial law declared. Even if he does, we’ll be decades cleaning up the mess left behind…
Thanks for being so predictable.
I’m consistently against needless killing and this is a problem for you why?
Oh yeah, because you’re so consistently for it.
One thing this war has made me realize is that we definitely have the percentage of the citizenry that would have ended up in the S.S.
After 9/11, I thought to myself, this is a little like living in a war zone. The attack on the WTC and the Pentagon was much less deadly than any bombing campaign, but I and everyone else still felt afraid and confused. I didn’t want other people to feel that way.
Many people didn’t feel that way, obviously.
I thought the same thing, Hysterical Woman. For just a moment there, for the few weeks before 9/11 and the start of the bombing campaign in Afghanistan, I let myself hope that the US would be bigger than this, and wouldn’t smash some other country into the stone age just because we had been attacked. I guess “turn the other cheek” either doesn’t work at a national level, or never was part of the approved canon for the American civil religion.
I wasn’t out of bed 15 minutes this morning when our resident morning elf, Younger Son, had Midnight Oil’s “My Country” coming out of the stereo.
Was it just a dream?
Were you so confused?
Was it just a giant leap of logic?
Was it the time of year, that made a state of fear?
Methods were the motives for the action.
And did I hear you say my country right or wrong?
I hear you say the truth must take a beating
The flag a camouflage for your deceiving
But I know we all make mistakes
This kid was 3.75 years old on 9/11/2001. His theory, related to me while I was wheeling him to the polls to vote (and DAMNIT I was going to vote that day!), was that Rob the Wrecker sent the planes into those buildings.
Rob the Wrecker being Bob the Builder’s chaotic evil alter ego, of course. He’d invented Rob some time before.
We had no 1st degree contacts lost, but the 2nd and 3rd degrees of separation are pretty saturated.
I’m consistently against needless killing and this is a problem for you why?
Because liberals are supposed to twist in the wind and waffle and doubt and waver so that the Wingnuts can make fun of their lack of certitude, that’s why!
“I wasn’t out of bed 15 minutes this morning when our resident morning elf, Younger Son, had Midnight Oil’s “My Country” coming out of the stereo.”
Good kid. We need a few million more just like him…
Amanda, OT but HOLY CRAP. What is with those Bullzeye ads?! They are OFFENSIVE. The one that is up right now is some chick with her pants about to fall off, literally. Um…! Please can those ads.
“”Ya think they have enough Alzheimers dedicated nursing homes to house all their currently afflicted and soon to be diagnosed?”"
The housed that fucker Reagan in the White House for a few years.
Debate skilz? Nutroots and “you so predictable! I predict you!”?
Halfmad, I got a petty slap for mentioning them (the bullseye ads). Good luck.
And mass, you do not add to the conversation. Ben totally pwnd you. Sukit.
que viva Allende.
For those of you plagued by the ads, use the Firefox browser with AdBlock.
Makes for a better viewing experience and you get tabbed windows to boot
From Sharon’s blog:
She had no connection to NYC, but watched the “wreckage of the life we’d known.” Melodramatic much?
Shorter: it’s all about Meeeeeeeee!
‘Nuff said.
I got pissed at Sharon and wrote this.
Ben Alpers–
I don’t see why it’s useful to pretend that Clinton and the Democrats are responsible for the invasion of Iraq. Clinton dealt with Hussein for 8 years without launching an invasion. Bush officials were rattling their sabres from the day he was inaugurated. And it was Bush, not Cheney or Armitage or anyone else, who told Clarke to find evidence to implicate Hussein in the 9/11 attacks.
I also don’t think it’s useful to attack the current congressional Democrats for the sins of Gephart and Daschle. The fact is, the current party leadership has pressed for an end to the war, and the current congress has passed a bill that would have mandated a withdrawal timetable.
The fact is, there are only two viable parties in this country. One is overwhelmingly for withdrawal, and one is overwhelmingly for staying indefinitely. And by unfairly maligning the peace party, you help the war party.
I suppose Sharon baked a flag cake?
My older son came home quite angry at his principal for rambling on about ISLAMIC terrorists ad nauseum, playing some patriotic country drivel, and then braying about the heroes who tried to tried to take over the plane that went down in PA.
That last part was particularly difficult, as older son attended a small private preschool with the nephew of the man who could have piloted that plane had the retakeover been successful. Nicky’s uncle is close with the Oganowski brothers, one of whom died and the other is now running for congress. He had actually met these guys in real life.
We played My Country again - THIS time, loud enough for said principal, who lives around the corner, to hear.
Ah! Here it is: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28148
gordo, I do recognize the virtue and the expediency of what you’re saying — that with only two alternatives, it’s not a good idea to undermine the less bad one.
But what Ben Alpers is saying is that it’s not useful to consider the Democrats “the peace party.” By their own account, they are far, far from that characterization. (Note how many Democrats take great pains to say they aren’t against all war, just this war.)
The reason it isn’t useful is that it leads to complacency. It leads to a situation where we think electing Democrats is enough. It may be necessary, but it isn’t sufficient.
Bob Cesca has a funny column on Rudy and how 9/11 has been leeched of all meaning by those vampires feeding off it for political advantage.
Congress has not seriously considered impeachment, ironically because Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay gave impeachment proceedings a bad name.
Dammit Dammit DAMMIT!!!!. You all remember that brilliant, honest and corporate-media ignored NYT op-ed-piece. Well, two of the soldiers who wrote that have just been killed.