Veterans Day...NSFW*

DOGS:



KIDS:



I can't even fathom the feeling of being in a combat zome overseas, but as a father with two little kids I can absolutely understand there is no greater sacrifice than being away from your kids for 14 months. None.

*NSFW unless crying at your desk is normal

[h/t Cole]

Reading Assignment

Former Powell Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson responds to Cheney's softball/talking points "interview" on CNN.

First, Wilkerson again explains how badly the Bush Administration failed in it's "interrogations" and how illegal they were...

The fourth unknown is the ad hoc intelligence philosophy that was developed to justify keeping many of these people, called the mosaic philosophy. Simply stated, this philosophy held that it did not matter if a detainee were innocent. Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance (this general philosophy, in an even cruder form, prevailed in Iraq as well, helping to produce the nightmare at Abu Ghraib). All that was necessary was to extract everything possible from him and others like him, assemble it all in a computer program, and then look for cross-connections and serendipitous incidentals--in short, to have sufficient information about a village, a region, or a group of individuals, that dots could be connected and terrorists or their plots could be identified.

Thus, as many people as possible had to be kept in detention for as long as possible to allow this philosophy of intelligence gathering to work. The detainees' innocence was inconsequential. After all, they were ignorant peasants for the most part and mostly Muslim to boot.

[...] Simply stated, even for those two dozen or so of the detainees who might well be hardcore terrorists, there was virtually no chain of custody, no disciplined handling of evidence, and no attention to the details that almost any court system would demand. Falling back on "sources and methods" and "intelligence secrets" became the Bush administration's modus operandi to camouflage this grievous failing.

Then he calls Cheney out for crawling out of his lair to revise history, fear-monger and sabotage and smear Obama...

Recently, in an attempt to mask some of these failings and to exacerbate and make even more difficult the challenge to the new Obama administration, former Vice President Cheney gave an interview from his home in McLean, Virginia. The interview was almost mystifying in its twisted logic and terrifying in its fear-mongering.

As to twisted logic: "Cheney said at least 61 of the inmates who were released from Guantanamo (sic) during the Bush administration...have gone back into the business of being terrorists." So, the fact that the Bush administration was so incompetent that it released 61 terrorists, is a valid criticism of the Obama administration? Or was this supposed to be an indication of what percentage of the still-detained men would likely turn to terrorism if released in future? Or was this a revelation that men kept in detention such as those at GITMO--even innocent men--would become terrorists if released because of the harsh treatment meted out to them at GITMO? Seven years in jail as an innocent man might do that for me. Hard to tell.

As for the fear-mongering: "When we get people who are more interested in reading the rights to an Al Qaeda (sic) terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry," Cheney said. Who in the Obama administration has insisted on reading any al-Qa'ida terrorist his rights? More to the point, who in that administration is not interested in protecting the United States--a clear implication of Cheney's remarks.

Evil personified. Richard Cheney deserves to have a fucking bag thrown over his head, abduction, swift "rendition" to Iraq to dropped off in Sadr City, where he can try to "interview" his way out of his inevitable horrible death.

UPDATE: Wilkerson's not off the hook with me, but I don't have time for that right now.

Re-run

I've posted this before, but I just got it in an email again, and it's worth re-posting in case you haven't seen it... After the erratic, unstable, desperate and increasingly bellicose behavior of McCain over the last month or so, this is even scarier...



Pass it on.

What Does This Picture Have to Do With Joe Biden's Iraq War vote...

Yes, Joe Biden voted for the Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq. But was he the same breed of sheep as everyone else who did? Was it solely political calculus like is suspected of Hillary? Or, total capitulation and trust in the President?...

You might recall a certain Rose Garden ceremony with a certain flesh-haired loser Democrat who sold out the Party (and as it turns out, the country) by going behind closed doors and crafting deal with Bush and the Republicans.

But who did Dick Fucking Gephardt really screw over? David Corn reminds us...

One of Biden's better moments came in the run-up to the war with Iraq. In the fall of 2002, the Bush administration, claiming Saddam Hussein had amassed loads of WMDs that he could hand to al Qaeda for attacks against the United States, was demanding that the House and Senate grant Bush the authority to invade Iraq whenever he wanted. Rather than cave to Bush, Biden, the chairman of the foreign relations committee, worked with Republican Senators Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel to craft an alternative: a resolution that would allow Bush to attack Iraq only for the purposes of destroying Iraq's WMDs and only after seeking UN approval. If the UN withheld permission, Bush would have to come back to Congress and prove that the threat was so "grave" that only military action could eliminate it. This was a wily legislative maneuver that could have averted a war. (And Biden told me and Michael Isikoff during an interview for our book, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, that he had received backdoor encouragement from Secretary of State Colin Powell.) But Biden's bipartisan measure was ultimately derailed by a fellow Democrat: House minority leader Richard Gephardt, who essentially accepted the White House's blank-check approach. After Gephardt did that, Republican senators told Biden, How can we be to the left of Dick Gephardt? "I was so angry," Biden later said. "I was frustrated. But I never second-guess another man's political judgment."

Biden went on to vote for the Iraq war resolution. Which demonstrated his Washington-ness. He had tried for something better. When that failed, he, too, accepted the prevailing notion. But his pre-vote effort to create a much more limited resolution will afford the Obama-Biden ticket a small measure of cover when its foes point out that Obama's main charge against John McCain (he supported the Iraq invasion) can also be applied to his running-mate.

As Corn points out, Biden still voted for the War, but what he wanted was NOT the bullshit he ended up putting his name on.

It was a mistake, but not as glaring as would appear at first glance, and much more excusable and reconcilable.

Reading Assignment

Publius at Obsidian Wings.

The Dangerous Warmongering John McCain

A taste:

In short, his is a world of good versus evil, where threatening and using force is always necessary, and where wildly diverse countries are lumped together as evil “autocracies.” No matter the country (Serbia, Iraq, Georgia), no matter the circumstances — the problem is always the same (evil), the solution always the same (threaten or use force).

[...] this is arguably the most dangerous aspect of the McCain “Doctrine” — the tendency to quickly classify things we don’t like as “evil”. Indeed, this is precisely what we’re seeing with Georgia — and we’ll see it again in a McCain administration. The assumption of “evil” is what leads to overbroad responses — after all, everything should be on the table if we’re fighting evil (this same initial assumption leads to torture, lawbreaking, etc.).

Read the whole damn thing. This guy is fucking frightening. Pat Buchanan (!) said that John McCain will make Dick Cheney look like Ghandi. That's starting to sound like an understatement. As cleek put it in the comments at ObWi, "he's not running for Bush's 3rd term; he thinks Bush was a lightweight."

It's the proliferation, Stupid.

Andrew Sullivan gets to the heart of the biggest danger of this whole Russia/Georgia dust-up:

[...] There is a balance to be struck between the West's obvious interest in getting Russian cooperation in the war on Jihadist terror and preventing Russian meddling in its near-abroad. There's a trade-off here. And allowing Russia its traditional sphere of influence may be much less of a headache than trying to police its every move and losing cooperation on such vital matters as securing loose nukes.

What worries me is that McCain's eagerness for more conflict in the world - pushing Russia and China into a corner - is not in the best interests of the United States. It may be moral; it may be exciting; it may provide the great national purpose McCain thinks we all need to feel. But it ignores the hard trade-offs involved, and perpetuates the whole with-us-or-against us bluster of the last eight years. We need more of that? More enemies? Less diplomacy? More conflict?

For the last seven years, Republicans and their neo-con lackeys (masters?) have trumped up the threat of Islamic jihad and/or the Axis of Evil to be the "threat of the 21st century." Cheney and his military-industrial buddies have mired us down in conventional ground wars that never needed to happen at the expense of the less testicular (and less-profitable) work of diplomacy and cooperation to secure the United States from the only REAL threat out there—

Proliferation.

"Evil" countries like North Korea and Iran want a nuclear weapon as a deterrent. Not to use on us, or even Israel. And since we went into Iraq, they are understandably working double-time to get one. Having a nuke is the ace in the hole that would ensure the next President like Bush (um, McCain?) will keep the hell out of their country. If Iran suddenly announced a successful nuclear weapon, do you think they would actually launch it? Of course not.

For that matter, if Saddam actually had WMD, do you think Bush would have invaded? I don't. The threat was the pretext for war.

The real danger to the U.S. isn't the march of the Red Army or small-time thugs in Iraq—it's the nuclear weapons and material floating around in many of the former Soviet republics getting into the wrong hands...you know, like the hands of the guy responsible for 9/11 who's still at large.

So for eight fucking years the Administration has all but ignored the nukes that already exist in favor of bluster about nuclear fantasies of a few bad governments. They've done next to nothing about the supply, and even less about the guy with the demand—Osama Bin Laden.

--

And McCain is even worse. He's a military guy. Steeled in a Cold War mentality. A military guy who's waited his whole life to get to the position that upstart, but connected, punk from Texas stole from him eight years ago. He's not interested in being President during a time of peace and prosperity—that shit is for pussies—he longs to be a War President. And nothing would suit him better than a resurgent binary struggle against an enemy like Russia.

Russia. The country we need to cooperate most closely with to control proliferation.

Excellent.

Georgia (Not) On My Mind

Wondering what's going on with the little war over in Russia? Don't listen to John McCain—he's full of crap. Read The War Nerd for some entertainment with your information.

UPDATE: Publius wonders how what the Russians in Georgia is any different than what the neocons here want from our government and, in particular, Israel's...

Because we’re so good, we can use force whenever and wherever we want. We won’t be excessive of course, because we’re constitutionally incapable of being wrong.

These militant nationalists also share a paranoid sense of decline. The great nation is always in danger of being overrun or embarrassed. There’s always some threat among us. Thus, there’s always some need to re-establish our strength and greatness – preferably through force. Because we’re so good.

My point is that the problem with the Russia response is, at bottom, the same problem with the response to the response. That problem is nationalism. Russia is doing exactly what the neocons want America and Israel to do.

Generally speaking, though, nationalism is almost always the problem. Looking abroad, we usually find ourselves at odds with various countries' nationalist wings...

[...]In America, though, the ideological soulmates of these people are the Bill Kristols of the world. Like the militant nationalists in every country everywhere, they think their country is the best country. They like clamoring for war to fight decline and to demonstrate strength.

If anything, though, the Russian nationalists have a leg up on the Iraq War cheerleaders because their invasion actually served a strategic military purpose. Allowing Georgia into NATO would be a humiliating disaster for Russia. It would also be a genuine military threat (particularly for a country still traumatized by WW2). Further, there was actually a military attack on Russia interests.

In Iraq, by contrast, there was no strategic threat. No attack. Nothing. But we invaded, bombed the crap out of their cities, and deposed their sovereign (if despicable) government.

To be clear, I deplore what Russia is doing. But I’ll do without the outrage from Bush and McCain, thank you. Russia is simply implementing tactics that are part and parcel of these men’s worldview and foreign policy philosophy – i.e., the philosophy of militant nationalism. Sometimes we call it neoconservatism.

Yeah, pretty much.

What McCain and others deliberately leave out of the discussion is that Georgia picked this fight. It is a total mismatch and they botched it horribly (failing to cut-off the tunnel?), and now they are getting their ass summarily kicked.

Russia, is overdoing it and punishing Georgia severely, but this ain't the Soviets on the march—no matter how much McCain pines for another Cold War.

UPDATE: An excellent on-the-ground analysis of the Georgian conflict. Plenty of blame to go around. Money quote:

Now the United States has ended up in a situation in the Caucasus where the Georgian tail was wagging the NATO dog. We were unable to control Saakashvili or to lend him effective assistance when his country was invaded. One lesson is that we need to be very careful in extending NATO membership, or even the promise of membership, to countries that we have neither the will nor the ability to defend.

In the meantime, American leaders have paid little attention to Russian diplomatic concerns, both inside the former borders of the Soviet Union and farther abroad. The Bush administration unilaterally abrogated the 1972 anti-missile defense treaty and ignored Putin when he objected to Kosovo independence on the grounds that it would set a dangerous precedent. It is difficult to explain why Kosovo should have the right to unilaterally declare its independence from Serbia, while the same right should be denied to places such as South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The bottom line is that the United States is overextended militarily, diplomatically and economically. Even hawks such as Vice President Cheney, who have been vociferously denouncing Putin's actions in Georgia, have no stomach for a military conflict with Moscow. The United States is bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan and needs Russian support in the coming trial of strength with Iran over its nuclear ambitions.

Instead of speaking softly and wielding a big stick, as Teddy Roosevelt recommended, the American policeman has been loudly lecturing the rest of the world while waving an increasingly unimpressive baton. The events of the past few days serve as a reminder that our ideological ambitions have greatly exceeded our military reach, particularly in areas such as the Caucasus, which is of only peripheral importance to the United States but of vital interest to Russia.

Obama has mistakenly jumped on the NATO-for-Georgia bandwagon as well. It's not a good idea.

Chilling

Spread it far and wide.

Withdrawal

Her opening statement during the hearing with Gen. Petraeus. It's very good.