USA Today Keeps The Good News Flowing -- Whether It's Absurd Or Not

When the news is bad, you have to talk about something else, if you're in the news business. Thus USA Today reports on a fantastic, absurd notion, and treats it as if it were serious! As if Bush and his administration would ever take advice from a group that's probably already on their list of enemies -- especially when that advice involves reversing the course of their most successful endeavor.

Most U.S. troops can be withdrawn safely from Iraq in roughly one year and the Bush administration should begin planning the pullout immediately, according to a study released Wednesday.

With the exception mostly of two brigades of about 8,000 troops who would remain in the touchy Kurdish region in the north for a year, trying to guard against conflict with Turkey, the U.S. troops would be moved to Kuwait initially, sags the study by the Center for American Progress, a self-described "progressive think tank" headed by John D. Podesta, a former chief of staff to former President Clinton.

That's my emphasis, of course. Of course.

A brigade and an air wing of some 70 to 80 planes would remain in the Persian Gulf country indefinitely.

Indefinitely is a very long time.

Meanwhile, the withdrawal would give the United States leeway to add 20,000 troops to the 25,000 in Afghanistan trying to counter Taliban and al-Qaeda forces.

Hey! I've got an idea! How about, before we kill anyone else, we take some of that $50 billion Bush wants for more war and spend it on a new, independent, transparent investigation of the crimes of 9/11?

Yes, another $50 BILLION. No, I'm not kidding!

President Bush plans to ask Congress next month for up to $50 billion in additional funding for the war in Iraq, a White House official said yesterday, a move that appears to reflect increasing administration confidence that it can fend off congressional calls for a rapid drawdown of U.S. forces.

The request -- which would come on top of about $460 billion in the fiscal 2008 defense budget and $147 billion in a pending supplemental bill to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq -- is expected to be announced after congressional hearings scheduled for mid-September featuring the two top U.S. officials in Iraq. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker will assess the state of the war and the effect of the new strategy the U.S. military has pursued this year.

The request is being prepared now in the belief that Congress will be unlikely to balk so soon after hearing the two officials argue that there are promising developments in Iraq but that they need more time to solidify the progress they have made, a congressional aide said.
...

Some consideration is being given to trimming the new request by a few billion dollars, the White House official said. But, he added, "this is pretty close to a done deal." Almost all the spending is relatively noncontroversial, he added, with the vast majority of it necessary just to keep the U.S. military operating in Iraq. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to reporters, said that the supplemental requests are likely to be "rolled together" and considered as one package.

And I wanted to spend that money finding out what really happened on 9/11. Silly me. You see? I've spent a few minutes looking at USA Today and now they've got me doing it! Like Bush is gonna take suggestions from a cold blogger!

But meanwhile the false optimism rolls on, in a grotesque parody of what used to be considered the national discourse:

How fast the troops depart from Iraq and most of them go home depends largely on how much essential equipment goes along with the withdrawal, according to the study.

The troops could be out of Iraq in no more than three months if the equipment is left behind, a course not proposed in the study.

So it's come to this: How much essential equipment do you think the troops should take home with them?

Lawrence Korb, a former Pentagon official who specialized in manpower and logistics there from 1981 to 1985, said in an interview: "It is essential that the military begin planning for a phased withdrawal from Iraq now so it can be safely completed within 10 to 12 months."

Ha!! On what planet does a former Pentagon official get to lecture the Decider Guy on what's essential? Bush won't even take advice from current Pentagon officials!

If the plan is adopted and U.S. combat units deployed in Iraq were not replaced as they went home the Bush administration could conclude the withdrawal by the end of next July "and with much more care than they did the invasion and occupation," the report said.

The administration could conclude the withdrawal by the end of next July ... but they won't!

Why would they cut their excellent adventure short when it's going so well already?

But the longer the media whores can keep you thinking that a withdrawal may be in the works, the happier the Decider Guy will be. It might annoy a cold blogger or two, it might get another few thousand Americans killed, and it might cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands more Iraqis, but who matters most, anyway? All these people, or the Decider Guy?

Clearly USA Today knows the answer.

New Details Support Old Story: Pat Tillman Was Murdered!

A new report from the AP's Martha Mendoza confirms what has been obvious all along: Pat Tillman was not the victim of accidental "friendly fire".

With three bullet holes in his forehead, with his diary and uniform burned, with his opinion of the war ("so fucking illegal") well-established, with his access to mainstream American media absolutely guaranteed, there was never any reason to accept the Army's changing story of Pat Tillman's not-so-accidental death.

Quite simply, the former Arizona State and NFL star could not be allowed to return home to tell what he had seen. He couldn't even be allowed to talk to Noam Chomsky on the telephone.

According to "news" reports which have mostly tried to paint her as crazy, Pat Tillman's mother has felt all along that her son was killed deliberately -- by people who should have been on his side. I have felt the same thing ever since I heard he was dead, and especially once the details of the tragedy began to emerge.

The Army has told lie after lie after lie about this, and the media have gobbled them up, as in the following stenography by Julian E. Barnes, who disgraces the Los Angeles Times:

Tillman, the NFL player who gave up a multimillion dollar contract to enlist in the Army, was mistakenly killed in Afghanistan by another member of his platoon. The Army initially announced that Tillman died in combat and not from friendly fire. Although officers knew the truth soon after the shooting, the military waited a month before telling Tillman's family he was not killed by Afghan militants.

With "reporting" such as this "leading the way", the media have managed to contain the discussion to questions like "Did the Army lie?" and "Who in the Army lied?"

They've stayed away from more dangerous questions, like "Why did the Army lie?" and the even more explosive "Why was Pat Tillman killed?", even though the answers to these questions are entirely obvious.

One can hope -- faintly, perhaps -- that the following article will change all that ... extended excerpts from Martha Mendoza of the AP, via the Washington Post:

AP: New Details on Tillman's Death

SAN FRANCISCO -- Army medical examiners were suspicious about the close proximity of the three bullet holes in Pat Tillman's forehead and tried without success to get authorities to investigate whether the former NFL player's death amounted to a crime, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

"The medical evidence did not match up with the, with the scenario as described," a doctor who examined Tillman's body after he was killed on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2004 told investigators.

The doctors -- whose names were blacked out -- said that the bullet holes were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.

Ultimately, the Pentagon did conduct a criminal investigation, and asked Tillman's comrades whether he was disliked by his men and whether they had any reason to believe he was deliberately killed. The Pentagon eventually ruled that Tillman's death at the hands of his comrades was a friendly-fire accident.

The medical examiners' suspicions were outlined in 2,300 pages of testimony released to the AP this week by the Defense Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

Among other information contained in the documents:

* In his last words moments before he was killed, Tillman snapped at a panicky comrade under fire to shut up and stop "sniveling."

* Army attorneys sent each other congratulatory e-mails for keeping criminal investigators at bay as the Army conducted an internal friendly-fire investigation that resulted in administrative, or non-criminal, punishments.

* The three-star general who kept the truth about Tillman's death from his family and the public told investigators some 70 times that he had a bad memory and couldn't recall details of his actions.

* No evidence at all of enemy fire was found at the scene -- no one was hit by enemy fire, nor was any government equipment struck.

The Pentagon and the Bush administration have been criticized in recent months for lying about the circumstances of Tillman's death. The military initially told the public and the Tillman family that he had been killed by enemy fire. Only weeks later did the Pentagon acknowledge he was gunned down by fellow Rangers.
...

The documents show that a doctor who autopsied Tillman's body was suspicious of the three gunshot wounds to the forehead. The doctor said he took the unusual step of calling the Army's Human Resources Command and was rebuffed. He then asked an official at the Army's Criminal Investigation Division if the CID would consider opening a criminal case.

"He said he talked to his higher headquarters and they had said no," the doctor testified.

Also according to the documents, investigators pressed officers and soldiers on a question Mrs. Tillman has been asking all along.

"Have you, at any time since this incident occurred back on April 22, 2004, have you ever received any information even rumor that Cpl. Tillman was killed by anybody within his own unit intentionally?" an investigator asked then-Capt. Richard Scott.
...

Investigators also asked soldiers and commanders whether Tillman was disliked, whether anyone was jealous of his celebrity, or if he was considered arrogant. They said Tillman was respected, admired and well-liked.

Stunning Headline Of The Week

And now, the award for the most astonishing headline of the week ending today, Saturday, July 21, 2007 ...

The envelope, please!

... and here's the winner, representing TIME Magazine:

Restoring the Draft: No Panacea

No kidding? All right, then ...

Everyone who thought restoring the draft was gonna be a panacea: Put on your DUNCE caps and go stand in the corner!

What? Nobody thought that?

Well I'll be...

Revisionist History 101: How Ronald Reagan Destroyed The Soviet Union With Only Four Words

The Latin phrase "post hoc, ergo proper hoc" translates literally as "after this, therefore because of this". It's a class of logical fallacy, and it's an easy one to spot. Any half-wit can see that it is not always (or even usually) true that because event B followed event A, therefore A caused B.

Twenty years ago today, Ronald Reagan made a speech in Berlin, in which he uttered the famous line "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

Somewhat more than two years later, a large number of people, not including Ronald Reagan, tore down the Berlin Wall.

Since that time, neocons, so-called journalists, and other less-than-half-wits have been saying that Ronald Reagan himself tore down the Berlin Wall, ended the Cold War, defeated the Soviet Union and saved America from Communism.

They're loony, of course. The idea is not worth half a banana in historical terms. But as propaganda, it's irresistable. Here's a recent example, from TIME's Romesh Ratnisar:

The four most famous words of Ronald Reagan's Presidency almost were never uttered.

Twenty years ago, on the morning of June 12, 1987, Reagan arrived in Berlin, on the occasion of the city's 750th birthday. He was scheduled to speak on the western side of the Brandenburg Gate, for years the city's symbolic dividing line. His speechwriters had drafted an address intended as much for Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, with whom Reagan was forging a close relationship, as for the 20,000 people who gathered to hear him speak. In the speech, Reagan would call on Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, but that language was opposed strongly by Reagan's National Security Council and the State Department, who feared it would be used by hardliners in the Kremlin to discredit Gorbachev.

This idea is loony too, of course. As if Fred saying something could discredit Barney! But it's also emblematic of a longstanding problem among the "thinkers" who had been making national security policy for the previous forty years: the "negative veto" power they granted the Soviet Union. In the White House, the Congress, the Pentagon, the State Department and elsewhere, virtually nothing could be done unless it could be demonstrated that the Russians wouldn't like it. And every policy initiative was viewed through the imaginary prism: What will the Russians think of this? Never mind that the geniuses in the CIA, the NSA, the DIA and State had no idea what the Russians were actually thinking, much less the ability to predict what they might think under some hypothetical circumstance.

After forty years of such twisted "analysis", it's no wonder the "experts" at State and elsewhere thought the Russian hardliners would (or could) use something Ronald Reagan said to discredit Mikhail Gorbachev. The Russian hardliners were nothing if not pragmatic, and clearly they understood Gorbachev could be discredited only by things he actually did or said. Similarly, Ronald Reagan was discredited by his words and actions, not by anything anyone else said about him, or to him.

But the White House wizards didn't understand any of this, and therefore, the article continues,

When the President's entourage arrived in Berlin, Reagan's team was still arguing over the final wording. State and NSC submitted yet another draft of the speech. But in the limousine ride to the Wall, Reagan told his deputy chief of staff, Kenneth Duberstein, that he intended to issue the fateful challenge to Gorbachev. "It's the right thing to do," he said.
...

For all its drama, the speech received relatively little media coverage. Compared to the younger, more vigorous Gorbachev, Reagan seemed to be a diminished figure on the world stage, a lame-duck President hobbled by the Iran-Contra scandal at home. But in hindsight, the "Tear Down this Wall" speech helps explain how the Cold War ended.

Sure it does! Unless it explains nothing of the sort!

Realistically speaking, the Soviet Union was never a threat to the existence of the United States, nor to our so-called "way of life". But the presence of a threat which could be exaggerated at will was very handy for those who would profit from an arms race. So we were told outright lies about the intentions and capabilities of the Soviets -- from the end of World War II, through the dissolution of the USSR and beyond. It was (and still is) good for business.

Much has been made of the fact that the CIA "missed" the collapse of the USSR. How could such a huge event have come as a shock to the world's most sophisticated intelligence-gathering apparatus? The standard analysis seems to imply that they underestimated the power of Ronald Reagan's speech.

The problem with this analysis is simple: there already existed ample evidence that the Soviet Union was ready to crumble. But so much horse manure had been fed into the system over the years that our vaunted intelligence experts had no idea what to think.

It would never have been politically correct to explain their failure in such terms. Therefore a fictional history had to be invented, and one was readily available. Reagan had made a speech asking Gorbachev to tear down the wall, the wall was torn down, therefore, post hoc ergo propter hoc, Reagan's speech tore down the wall.

And this is why the TIME article is headlined: "The Speech That Brought Down a Wall".

O' course, matey! It was the speech that done it!

Two decades later, what can we learn from the epochal events that followed — the fall of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of Germany and the collapse of the Soviet Union? "People were afraid of the consequences of what Reagan would say," George Shultz, Reagan's long-serving Secretary of State, told me over lunch in Berlin last week. "But it turns out he was right."

Sure he was! Really!! As long as you don't look at any of the historical facts!

As Bob Parry wrote in Rating Reagan: A Bogus Legacy:

How, why and when was the Cold War “won”? If, for instance, the United States was already on the verge of victory over a foundering Soviet Union in the early-to-mid-1970s, as some analysts believe, then Reagan’s true historic role may not have been “winning” the Cold War, but helping to extend it.

If the Soviet Union was already in rapid decline, rather than in the ascendancy that Reagan believed, then the massive U.S. military build-up in the 1980s was not decisive; it was excessive. The terrible bloodshed in Central America and Africa, including death squad activities by U.S. clients, was not some necessary evil; it was a war crime aided and abetted by the Reagan administration.

That debate, however, has never been engaged, except by Reagan acolytes who chose to glorify Reagan’s role in “winning the Cold War” rather than examining the assumptions that guided his policies in the 1970s and 1980s. Although it’s largely forgotten now, Reagan’s rise within the Republican Party was as a challenge to the “détente” strategies pursued by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger – before the Watergate scandal forced Nixon from office – and later by Gerald Ford. Détente was, in effect, an effort to ease the Cold War to an end, much as finally occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

And nowadays, Reagan is portrayed as a hero of America because he supposedly turned his back on the failed policies of his predecessors and went in another direction. In this context, it wouldn't be appropriate to mention that his "Tear Down This Wall" speech was actually an extension of détente rather than a rejection of it!

Later Ratnisar quotes George Schultz saying:

"It's become famous, first of all, because what he called for happened. If you look back to the day after the speech, or the month after, I don't think it was written about that much. But it got big reverberations once the Wall came down and people looked back at Reagan's speech and remembered that it was controversial at the time to say that."

Listen: In the fall of 2000, a private interest group issued a position paper calling for "a catastrophic and catalyzing event", a "new Pearl Harbor", as they put it, which would enable their radical foreign and domestic policy agendas to be implemented very quickly. Four months later, more than a dozen signatories to that position paper found themselves in very high government positions, thanks to a new administration which hadn't exactly won any legitimate elections. Eight months after that two buildings at the World Trade Center were hit by hijacked airplanes and three WTC buildings disintegrated; in addition the headquarters of the world's most sophisticated military / intelligence organization was hit by a missile. One could make a reasonable claim that this was the New Pearl Harbor -- and therefore that the position paper had knocked down the towers. But even if you don't do that -- even if you merely mention all these facts in the same paragraph -- you're branded a lunatic fringe nut-case with a tin-foil hat, by the very same people who claim that Ronald Reagan's speech on June 12, 1987 was responsible for the fall of the Berlin Wall, two and a half years later!

Talk about nut-cases!!

Still and all, it is quite correct to say that the PNAC document has become famous, first of all, because what it called for happened. If you look back to the day after it was published, or the month after, I don't think it was written about that much. But it got big reverberations once the towers came down and people looked back at "Rebuilding America's Defenses" and realized that it was a smoking gun pointing to treason.

But Romesh Ratnisar probably never even thought of that. Instead the article continues:

Shultz went on. "I guess the point I'm making here is that ideas matter a lot, the underlying ideas that stand behind policies. When you don't have ideas, your policies are flip-flopping all over the place. When you do have ideas, you have more consistency. And when you have the right ideas — then you can get somewhere." Reagan had the right ideas.

Bob Parry describes some of those "right ideas":

Cold War obsession led him to coddle an unsavory collection of right-wing psychopaths, including death squad operatives who engaged in genocide, neo-fascists who relished bizarre torture techniques, and drug traffickers who seized a rich geopolitical business opportunity.

None of this "coddling" upended the Soviet Union, but it did enrich a few of the guiltiest people on the planet, while killing tens of thousands -- or more! -- of the most innocent.

Predictably, after the Soviet Union fell, the

neocons claim[ed] credit for “winning the Cold War” and thus walk[ed] away from accountability for supporting brutal right-wing regimes and even terrorists in the 1980s.

So it goes.

And now the lie is being resurrected, by the supposedly liberal media, who want to keep you ignorant of everything that matters and obsessed with this bizarre fiction they call our national history.

~~~

Coincidences?

Coincidentally -- or perhaps not? -- sixteen years ago today, Boris Yeltsin was elected president in Russia's first-ever democratic election.

His reform program consisted of the mass privatization of state-run enterprises. Soon after the program was instituted, the country experienced inflation, heavy taxes, and a protracted economic depression.

And in another, utterly appalling, "coincidence", one of the ads appearing today at TIME dot Com features a photo of (and a quote from) O. J. Simpson, whose former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, was brutally murdered thirteen years ago today.

Simpson says the media should admit that it's not doing a good job. (And, ironically, he could use the coverage of his murder trial as Exhibit "A"!)

So we've got revisionist history all over the place today. How fitting.

When You Can't Win With Loaded Dice ...

The New York Times editorializes ...

Gitmo: A National Disgrace

Ever since President Bush rammed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 through Congress to lend a pretense of legality to his detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, we have urged Congress to amend the law to restore basic human rights and judicial process. Rulings by military judges this week suggest that the special detention system is so fundamentally corrupt that the only solution is to tear it down and start again.

The target of the judges’ rulings were Combatant Status Review Tribunals, panels that determine whether a prisoner is an “unlawful enemy combatant” who can be tried by one of the commissions created by the 2006 law. The tribunals are, in fact, kangaroo courts that give the inmates no chance to defend themselves, allow evidence that was obtained through torture and can be repeated until one produces the answer the Pentagon wants.

On Monday, two military judges dismissed separate war crimes charges against two Guantánamo inmates because of the status review system. They said the Pentagon managed to get them declared “enemy combatants,” but not “unlawful enemy combatants,” and moved to try them anyway under the 2006 law. That law says only unlawful combatants may be tried by military commissions. Lawful combatants (those who wear uniforms and carry weapons openly) fall under the Geneva Conventions.

If the administration loses an appeal, which it certainly should, it will no doubt try to tinker with the review tribunals so they produce the desired verdict. Congress cannot allow that. When you can’t win a bet with loaded dice, something is wrong with the game.

And so on.

Forgive me, but isn't the NYT also a part of the problem?

A Whole New Form Of Government

Jack Ruby, the man who killed Lee Harvey Oswald, wanted to testify in Washington before Chief Justice Earl Warren, whose Commission was "investigating" the JFK assassination. Ruby felt intimidated in Dallas and repeatedly asked Warren to take him to Washington; Warren replied falsely that it was not in his power to do so.

Seeing that his chance had slipped away, that the Warren Commission was about to whitewash the JFK assassination, Ruby sounded a warning: "a whole new form of government is going to take over the country".

Warren thought Ruby was delirious, and many writers have sneered at this comment over the years. But it keeps coming to mind, much more often lately than ever before, and much more powerfully...

Take for instance the following excellent column, from Joe Galloway in the Salt Lake Tribune of May 17, 2007:

Hang in there, America: Only 613 more days of Bush

There are 613 days left until Jan. 20, 2009, and the end of our long national nightmare as President George W. Bush and his Rasputin, Vice President Dick Cheney, shuffle off to their necessarily well-guarded retirement homes and onto the ash heap of history.

We HOPE they shuffle off!! ... and by the time you read this the number will be less than 613, but it's still a long, long time.

So much of what they talked about doing in a new century and a new and different world never came to pass.

That was all deliberate. Those were promises they never intended to keep.

So much of what they did to grow the power of the presidency and prune the constitutional safeguards crafted by our founding fathers, they never talked about.

Exactly. And this was deliberate too.

There are many here among us who've been saying so all along. We were mocked six or seven years ago; now that everyone can see we were right, is it too late?

Chris Floyd has touched on this point quite recently:

It's not a question of "spin," of "putting the best face on things," or being "clearer than truth," in Dean Acheson's sinister Cold War phrase -- gilding the lily, exaggerating for effect. Nor, conversely, is it a case of self-deception, of "true believers" unable to take off their blinders, of "idealists" unwilling to bend their dreams to mucky reality, or even of fourth-rate dullards too stupid to see the filth and ruin caused by their own cretinous policies. They are not just spinning, they are not deceiving themselves, they are not too stupid to know what's going on.

They are lying -- lying deliberately -- lying brazenly and cynically [...] They are lying because their causes are evil and cannot be spoken of openly: aggressive war for loot and domination; the callous rape and despoiling of their own nation for the profit and power of their wealthy cronies; the construction of a global gulag of secret prisons, eternal captives, carefully refined and officially approved torture; the deliberate, systematic destruction of the Constitutional system of government in favor of arbitrary, militarized tyranny; the deliberate, systematic sowing of division and rancor and hatred and fear among the people, to keep them disunited, weak, scattered, unable to resist the depredations of a small, criminal elite. If these be your gods, then of course you must lie to do them service.

Joe Galloway continues:

The American people have turned their backs on George Bush and his dreams of planting the seeds of democracy in Mesopotamia at the point of a gun and seeing them spread like kudzu across the Middle East.

There are those who no longer believe the president ever had such a dream -- that it was all only a public relations strategy. And there are those who never believed it for a moment, even at the beginning. Let's see now, democracy for Iraq, did that come before or after human rights? I know it came after weapons of mass destruction. We've had so many different reasons for liberating these damned ungrateful Iraqis, it's no wonder nobody can keep all the justifications straight.

And yet, those who said so all those years ago were moonbats! Are you with us or against us now?

He's failed in his quest for victory in Iraq and for a world put in order by a new and stronger United States, and his brash blundering into a dangerous land has made us all much less safe.

There are those who say this was intentional, and it's tough to argue with them. in my opinion, it's the vilest protection racket ever developed; Bush knows his war in Iraq makes the US weaker and generates more global terror, but that's fine with him; without more global terror, his chief political advisor would have to learn a new trick.

The president's approval ratings are below his knees, sinking to 28 percent in one recent poll, and he cannot recover short of the kind of miracle that parts seas and feeds the multitudes.

Bush's numbers are three times as strong as Cheney's, for all the difference it makes. Cheney still struts around the world, telling America's allies what he expects of them, and his buddy Georgie has already accomplished what he set out to accomplish. And yet, somehow, most of America's best dissident writers still have not figured this out. So they write such as:

The war that was never ours to win by military means -- the only button this president who never learned war ever learned how to push -- is lost. Bush and Cheney and the rest of their cronies and co-conspirators are toast.

I disagree! In what sense are they toast?

Chris Floyd gets this right, too:

They have taken the measure of the Democratic "opposition" and now realize that no one is going to seriously hinder them in the pursuit of their sinister agenda. Oh, they may have to toss a few bodies overboard -- Gonzales himself is probably being fitted for a winding sheet even as we speak -- but it is now obvious that the leaders of the criminal organization are not going to be held legally accountable for their high crimes. They are not going to be impeached -- although the many causes for impeachment cry out to the heavens. They are not going to be tried; they are not going to be jailed. They are not going to suffer the slightest inconvenience. They can see already that they will retire to lives of staggering wealth and privilege.

Joe Galloway continues:

The question is: How did such ordinary-looking men -- seemingly unable to carry out even the smallest non-political tasks of governing -- succeed in doing such extraordinary and lasting damage to our country, our military and our body politic in so few years?

Actually, both the question and the transition itself were easy. And in both cases, the answer is the same: 9/11!

The attacks were false but the reaction was genuine. And they needed the reaction, so they didn't mind that the attacks were bogus -- so long as they were never properly investigated!

And by the way, they're not as incompetent as you might think. It's only a disguise.

They're very good at implementing their private agenda, and utterly incompetent at doing what they said they would do for us! How ironic!

With Congress in the hands of the Democrats, and the 2008 election looming dead ahead, the president can't even count on key figures in his own Republican Party to stand behind him as he embarks on a long and painful lame duckhood.

But it doesn't matter -- this particular president is the least lame of any duck in presidential history. The electoral system is wrecked -- not worn down and broken, but deliberately smashed! Vandalized for political gain! And the payoff hasn't even started to roll in.

His hopes of crafting meaningful immigration reform and fixing Social Security are dead on arrival.

Hang on a minute: Immigration reform was a campaign promise nobody ever intended to fill. And they were hoping to loot Social Security but that hasn't happened -- yet. So apparently you can't have everything, at least not all at once, even if you're a born to wear the chimperial visage, so to speak. But that was all a distraction, anyway. And the ship of crime sailed a long time ago.

The legacies that George W. Bush will carry into retirement are the war he started, lost and stubbornly refused to end, and the corruption that he and his team visited on our democracy and Constitution.

But he doesn't care about all that. He will have a retirement of wealth and privilege beyond measure, rather than the justice he deserves. And his extended crime family of despicable drunken evil pricks will roll on untroubled.

The president's lawyer, "mi abogado," Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, dangles in the wind as we learn, day by day, of how grotesquely this administration politicized the professional staff of the Justice Department.

The AG will be kept on as long as practicable, not a moment longer. When he's gone there will be another to take his place. And another, and another...

It was Gonzalez, as White House counsel, who provided legal cover for the torture and maltreatment of prisoners and suspects that led directly to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the CIA's secret Kafkaesque prisons scattered around the world where "enhanced" interrogation methods were generously, if unproductively, employed.

It was Gonzalez, as attorney general, who hired and gave unprecedented hiring and firing powers to a 33-year-old attorney, Monica Goodling, who'd graduated from a TV evangelist's law school. It was Goodling who resigned and took the Fifth Amendment to avoid answering questions that hadn't even been asked. It was Goodling who was Justice's liaison to the White House and Karl Rove.

Meantime, the White House can't find 5 million e-mail messages involving official business and refuses to provide many of those it can find to the congressional committees investigating the firing of U.S. attorneys.

Right!

Helen Thomas explained it perfectly:

Picture this: Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was in intensive care at a local hospital where he is being treated for pancreatitis in March 2004. Comey, then the acting attorney general because of Ashcroft's illness, was in the hospital room with Ashcroft when Gonzales, then Bush's White House counsel, arrived and tried to pressure Ashcroft to approve the legality of Bush's warrantless wiretapping program.

Ashcroft refused to do so. But Bush went ahead anyway with the illegal wiretapping, relenting later when Comey and others threatened to resign.

Bush later promoted Gonzales to attorney general.

I'm not making this up.

Helen Thomas rocks!

Joe Galloway continues:

The agencies of government - the CIA, FBI, Treasury, Department of Defense and who knows who else - use secret executive authority to suck up databases of personal information about ordinary Americans, without regard to their privacy rights, in a search for suspected terrorists.

Have they found any, using that information? Have they unearthed terror cells with more potential than the ones in Florida and New Jersey that were penetrated and perhaps manipulated by FBI informants?

No! They haven't, and we can strike the "perhaps". "Manipulated" it is! Hooray for Joe Galloway!

That sort of terrorist isn't half so frightening as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

Half? A tenth!!

Over in Iraq, 150,000 American troops soldier on, attempting, at the cost of their own lives and limbs, to follow the orders of a president who still thinks he can pull victory out of defeat.

Ahh, but he can, he can!

It's called the Oil Law, and if he can get Congressional Democrats to endorse it as a benchmark (which they seem utterly and spinelessly willing to do) then he's a winner! No matter what Joe Galloway or anyone else says about it:

A democratically elected but hopelessly divided Iraqi parliament feuds and dithers and contemplates its summer vacation while Americans and Iraqis die in increasing numbers in the streets outside the Green Zone, and the mortar and rocket fire lands inside that sanctuary with increasing frequency.

The Iraqi government is neither as democratically elected nor as sovereign as one might suppose.

Six-hundred-thirteen days, and counting. Nineteen months. It doesn't seem possible or even bearable.

No possible, not bearable, and everyone knows it.

Major changes are afoot, methinks. Long before we see those nineteen moons, we will see indisputable evidence of what Jack Ruby would call "a new form of government tak[ing] over the country."

All the pieces are in place; they have been for some time now.

As the counter-terror experts keep telling us, it's not a question of "IF".

Hidden Cost Of The GWOT #419: Diplomatic Cover -- 'They Send Us A Bill, And We Just Pay It'

U.S. Pays Pakistan to Fight Terror, but Patrols Ebb according to David E. Sanger and David Rhode in the New York Times:

WASHINGTON, May 19 — The United States is continuing to make large payments of roughly $1 billion a year to Pakistan for what it calls reimbursements to the country’s military for conducting counterterrorism efforts along the border with Afghanistan, even though Pakistan’s president decided eight months ago to slash patrols through the area where Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are most active.

Now that's cool, isn't it? They don't even have to go patrolling anymore, but we still give them money! It makes a lot of sense to me!

The monthly payments, called coalition support funds, are not widely advertised.

That's understandable, wouldn't you say? I wouldn't advertise it either.

Buried in public budget numbers, the payments are intended to reimburse Pakistan’s military for the cost of the operations. So far, Pakistan has received more than $5.6 billion under the program over five years, more than half of the total aid the United States has sent to the country since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, not counting covert funds.

Five point six billion? Meaningless! Less than one percent of the GWOT!! Chump change!

Some American military officials in the region have recommended that the money be tied to Pakistan’s performance in pursuing Al Qaeda and keeping the Taliban from gaining a haven from which to attack the government of Afghanistan. American officials have been surprised by the speed at which both organizations have gained strength in the past year.

Why should the money be conditional? Pakistan pretends to be our ally in the bogus Global War On Terror. We're making trillions of dollars. What's the problem?

But Bush administration officials say no such plan is being considered, despite new evidence that the Pakistani military is often looking the other way when Taliban fighters retreat across the border into Pakistan, ignoring calls from American spotters to intercept them.

Exactly. And besides, we can't let anything happen to Pervez Musharraf. He's one indispensable element, that's for sure!

There is also at least one American report that Pakistani security forces have fired in support of Taliban fighters attacking Afghan posts.

The administration, according to some current and former officials, is fearful of cutting off the cash or linking it to performance for fear of further destabilizing Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who is facing the biggest challenges to his rule since he took power in 1999.

Good one! "took power" is Right! This is why Gwynne Dyer calls Musharraf's Pakistan "a one-bullet regime" -- it makes perfect sense to give them billions of dollars, whenever they need it. Who needs a nuclear-armed rogue state on the border of their Imperial Ambitions? Not us!!

The White House would not directly answer the question of why Pakistan is being paid the same very large amount after publicly declaring that it is significantly cutting back on its patrols in the most important border area.

I wouldn't answer that question, either. Would you?

Or else I might just say: "Come on! Who do you think you are, and what do you think you're asking for? Accountability? Get real! It's only a few billion dollars! And besides, who cares?"

“They send us a bill, and we just pay it,” said a senior military official who has dealt extensively with General Musharraf. “Nobody can really explain what we are getting for this money or even where it’s going.”

So that's just about perfect, isn't it? You could call it nuclear blackmail, if you like. I wouldn't be in a position to disagree. But I see it a shade differently.

Let's say a middle-aged man of questionable orientation wants to cavort with the young buckaroos. He needs some hot hetero cover, so he'll hire a high-end call-girl to hang on his arm.

It's easy money for her; perfect, in fact. She doesn't mind that he doesn't want her, 'cause she thinks he's a pig.

And he only cares about his image, so the fact that she's along for the ride is all that matters!

She doesn't actually need to wear a banner saying "My very presence -- on the arm of this despicable swine -- legitimizes the GWOT!"

MSM Complicity In 9/11? Are These People Crazy?

Are these people nuts, or what?

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, but three times is enemy action.

From BrassCheckTV dot Com via WRH:

If a crime were committed and immediately afterward "experts" appeared on the scene claiming knowledge that nobody could possibly have about it, what would you think? That's exactly what happened the morning of 9/11

Is this video direct evidence of MSM complicity in 9/11? The cold blogger says: "Watch it and decide for yourself!"

Fox News featured a "man in the street" eye witness who explained in strangely formal language the science behind why the towers collapsed when most engineers and firemen were utterly baffled and in shock by what had just taken place.

CBS featured a Bush administration insider (and not identified as such) as a guest who actively worked to dissuade Dan Rather (and viewers) from speculating that there must have been explosive charges placed in the buildings for them to have collapsed the way they did.

MSNBC presented an elaborately detailed story about the lifestyle and anti-US philosophy of Osama bin Laden - while both towers were still burning and long before Bin Laden had been accused by anyone.

I could cite other examples from memory, but these guys have the video!!

'Mixed Reviews' For Bush's Health Care Cuts? What BS!

Your nearly frozen correspondent got a bit warm above the clavicles while reading Christopher Lee and Lori Montgomery in the Washington Post on this fine cold Sunday morning.

They were selling a piece of obvious fiction called "Bush's Proposed Health-Care Cuts Get Mixed Reviews" and saying things like:

Depending on whom you ask, the budget that President Bush proposed last week will save or sink Medicare and Medicaid, two popular programs that, along with Social Security, threaten to swamp the federal budget as the baby-boom generation retires.

And I was thinking: BS!! BFS!! It's the MF Pentagon and the BS tax cuts for the filthy rich that threaten to swamp the bloody federal budget! Of all the despicable bloody BS!

It's the GWOT -- a BSWOBST at that !! -- that's eating up our bloody budget, you loony MF stooges, that and George MF BS Bush's signature act of treason: wartime tax cuts! These are the things that threaten to swamp the bloody MF federal budget!

But no! That's not right either!! These two things have already swamped the bloody MF BS federal budget, you bloody F BS-mongers! And it's all part of a comprehensive, long-term, mostly-secret and thoroughly evil plan that you would be mentioning right now if you had any...

Don't get me started. Just think of Grover MF Norquist and his vicious MF BS about shrinking the government till you can drown it in a bathtub ...

Now think of Karl BS Rove and his favorite tactic: truth by inversion. How hard would it be for Karl BS Rove to come up with a diabolical MF plan to shrink the federal government by spending scads of money ... by pouring it right into the pockets of the people who put him in office in the first place?

It wouldn't take long for a slick-talking sociopath like George MF BS Bush to sell that plan to the fat and bloody ignorant American MF public, using a campaign which -- irony of ironies -- targets one of the groups it hurts the most: mid- to low-income Evangelical Christians with undiagnosed Cranial Rectal Disorder!

Bush, citing the need for fiscal responsibility, proposed reducing by $101 billion over five years the spending growth of the two health programs, which serve 93 million people and will cost the government $564 billion this year.

And well it should be MF controversial, you bloody MF AH scribblers! Where are the real reporters? Imagine writing about George MF BS Bush "citing the need for fiscal responsibility" without a historical comment! That's the perfect place for a little historical context, eh what?

After six years of not being able to pronounce "fiscal responsibility" -- much less spell it -- the twice-unelected so-called president, now pretending to work with a bunch of spineless donkeys in Congress, discovers "fiscal responsibility" for the very first time, decides the sick and elderly will bear the brunt of it, and maneuvers to place the blame for this outrageous travesty at least partially on the newly elected donkeys.

BS! BFS! When does this MF BS stop? When do we get to see a bloody donkey who's willing to kick up his furry little hind legs and say "ENOUGH!! All this robbing from the poor and giving to the rich has got to stop NOW!!"

And what happened to the merest shred of fairness in reporting? Look at what passes for "balance" in the next paragraph:

Budget experts call the plan one of the most significant efforts in years to rein in federal spending on entitlement programs. But health-care providers and advocates for beneficiaries call the proposed cuts arbitrary and say they would exact an unaffordable toll on a big part of the nation's health-care system.

Did you notice how finely-crafted that first sentence is? It doesn't threaten Ming pottery, but listen: Who could argue with budget experts? Is anyone against significant efforts? Who wouldn't want to rein in federal spending? And entitlement programs certainly have a bad name in the CMSM lately, so in fact every phrase in that sentence was heavily loaded.

On the other hand, it says here the cuts would be arbitrary and they would exact a toll on a big part of the nation's health-care system.

The nation's health care system? What about the people? What about the bloody F people? Get out of here with your weak BS, you MF scoundrels! Toll on the system my sweet MFA!!

Some day, hopefully soon, the middle- to low-income Evangelical Christians -- who have nothing really, other than their doctor bills and their pharmacy bills and their kids -- will finally look up and see the cheap sleazy MF scoundrels they've put in office getting ready to start another war, and they will tremble. Or if they don't, they should.

Because soon their kids will find out that there are no MF jobs and there is no chance of bringing in any more MF jobs (jobs? no, sorry! American jobs outsourced! sorry, Americans! global progress!!)

And there won't be any unemployment or job-training or welfare or health-care (entitlements? sorry! we had to rein in the federal budget!) and they'll soon find out that their only viable economic options involve choosing one of the various ways in which they can risk their lives in some Godforsaken country whose name they cannot even pronounce, let alone spell. And that'll be that!

The only jobs left will be temporary till-death-do-us-part gigs in the Front Row of the Empire, where their kids -- and your kids, and mine -- will patrol the perimeter as professional pawns in the endless, pointless and mostly bogus generational struggle against the demonized other -- the nameless, faceless, and ultimately invincible enemy which the vicious lying warmongering Fisto-Crashists like to call islamofascism.

They have to say that; it's the only way they can do Empire without a Draft.

And they'll win the hearts and minds as well as the warm bodies of all the mid- and low-income Evangelical Christians with undiagnosed Cranial Rectal Disorder, right along with all the other warm bodies they need, because whether or not we're all gung-ho about the Holy Bogus Imperative of wiping out Monolithic Global Islamofascism, we all have to eat, don't we?

And if there are no other MF jobs, that'll be because these vicious MF BS-mongers have been shipping them out of the country ever since they started implementing their long-term plan to turn our more-or-less moderate democratic republic into a totalitarian military-police state.

But there's still no bloody MF money, and it's BS to blame it on entitlements. The secret -- the open but deadly and therefore mostly unspoken secret -- is that there's no bloody MF money because your friends and your relatives and your neighbors and your co-workers, and all the stupid MF people you honk at and swear at every day on your way to work -- and all the people they know and love and work with and swear at, and so on, and on and on -- all those people bought all that BS!

And they sat on their couch and watched NASCAR or they went down to the corner for a beer or they did a thousand and one other things, and while nobody but the Fisto-Crashists were paying attention, our collective future was stolen right out from under our noses, in broad daylight -- on television, even!

And now, Little Georgie -- Little Georgie MF BS Bush -- wants all the MF money this suddenly-BS country can borrow, just to pay for his Excellent Adventures. And we're getting it in the MF ear -- again! -- from the GD WP, which IMVHO no longer deserves the privilege of using my MF initials.

What BS! It's no wonder I'm getting a little warm above the clavicles.

And that's putting it mildly!

Is The White House Turning Over A New Leaf? Not In Ten Million Years!

[UPDATED below]

The headline from Reuters says "White House will cooperate with investigations", but the article below it doesn't leave the same impression. Not to me, anyway.

Here's the relevant part:

"Of course, we will cooperate with any investigations that the Congress wants to pursue. We believe in vigorous and legitimate oversight by the Congress," White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten said in an interview on National Public Radio.

Au conraire, mon ami: If there's one principle of governance this administration believes in, it's secrecy!

It's been clear ever since January of 2001 that the Bush administration does not believe in vigorous and legitimate oversight -- not by Congress, not by the American people, not by anybody.

They have classified documents at a faster rate, and released documents at a slower rate, than any administration since the Freedom Of Information Act came into existence, by far.

So Joshua Bolten's promise of cooperation rings hollow, on track record alone. But it rings hollower still when he follows it with a veiled threat.

He added, "I don't think political witch hunts are going to be particularly productive or well received here in Washington."

With this statement Bolten has laid bare the strategy by which the Shrub administration hopes to avoid being held accountable for any of the horror it has inflicted during the past six years!

According to Dictionary dot com, a "witch hunt" is "an investigation carried out ostensibly to uncover subversive activities but actually used to harass and undermine those with differing views."

According to my notes about contemporary Republican usage, the word "political" is used to describe all kinds of dissent or opposition. The unspoken implication here is "We're in power; They're just jealous." And then they ignore the subject with religious fervor. Once an objection is labelled "political", they never acknowledge it again. It's almost as if the word "political" meant "beneath contempt". How ironic.

In any case, Joshua Bolten has just spelled out the White House strategy for handling the investigations which the Democrats will soon start running and with which the White House says it "will cooperate":

The White House will call such investigations "political witch hunts", implying that the administration has done nothing wrong and that the Democrats are merely harrassing them for partisan political reasons -- reasons beneath contempt.

The investigations will hardly ever get access to documents, and they will have incredible trouble getting access to witnesses, and anyone who is actually required to testify under oath will develop sudden and acute amnesia. But the White House will claim every step of the way that they are cooperating as much as they can, consistent with their sacred duty to protect our national security.

They'll also claim that the Democrats are lucky to get any "cooperation" at all, considering that their so-called investigations are little more than "political witch hunts".

Since the investigations are "political witch hunts", they will clearly not be "legitimate", and therefore even if they wind up being "vigorous", the Republicans will still treat them as "beneath contempt".

If you don't believe me, wait and see. I don't usually make predictions, but this one is easy! File it under "Obstruction of Justice 101".

UPDATE

Quivers of Flaming Darts to Reuters for the Headline

Imagine repeating a statement from this administration as if it were true!

What would have been wrong with ...
Bolten: White House will cooperate with investigations
or
White House will cooperate with investigations -- spokesman
or
White House says it will cooperate with investigations
or
White House promises to cooperate with investigations
...

The "Chilling Plot" To Scare New York Senseless

The bogus terror scare we were sneering at on Monday turned out to be a big winner for the fearmongers at the New York Post.

Under the headline:

CHILLING PLOT FOR 9/11 II

New York Post readers found out that

Al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq planned to sneak into the United States with student visas and carry out a devastating new round of 9/11-style attacks [...]

Whoa! It's a major emergency, right?

Well, not exactly...

Details of the frightening copycat plot were discovered in documents found about six months ago when coalition forces raided an insurgent hideout in Iraq, ABC News reported.

OK, what do we know about this?

Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, recently submitted written testimony to Congress based on a classified report that revealed al Qaeda "was planning terrorist operations in the U.S."

Maples gave no details but sources told ABC the plot may have involved as many as 20 terrorists slipping in to the United States using student visas - just like some of the 19 conspirators who carried out the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks.

Well of course Maples gave no details -- and it's not even clear whether the documents about which he spoke were found or fabricated.

But fortunately

The terror scheme was discovered in its early stages and there is no sign that any plotters reached the United States, the sources said.

So was the headline justified?

Elsewhere in the world, real news agencies reported that the so-called plot was "more aspirational than operational" and that the group was "years away from pulling it off".

And despite the hysterical headline, the "frightening copycat" aspect of the alleged "terror plot" seems to have consisted of nothing more than the notion that the would-be terrorists might try to slip into the USA on student visas.

Nothing about scheduling more than a dozen simultaneous war games in order to tie up the country's air defenses and create enough confusion to give their plot a chance.

Nothing about planting enough explosives in three skyscrapers so that they could be hyper-demolished -- not just knocked down but turned to dust!

Nothing about slamming a missile -- or a drone, or something small and extremely maneuverable -- into the Pentagon and then claiming it was a fully loaded jumbo jet.

Nothing about the awesome savagery of demolishing buildings full of fire and emergency workers.

Nothing about obtaining anthrax from a "secure" Army weapons lab, let alone arranging to have it sent to any politicians or newsmen who happened to be asking embarrassing questions.

Nothing about placing millions of dollars worth of put options on the very stocks which would fall after the attacks, and doing it through a bank run by a former CIA officer.

Nothing -- not even a hint -- about stirring the idiotic passions of a fat and stupid nation, boiling their blood with the most heinous attack imaginable, using the largest and most expensive propaganda symphony ever bought to whip them into a stupefied frenzy of hate, and using their oblivious rage as a pretext for starting the endless and limitless war the terrorists have always wanted.

In other words, it wasn't a "copycat plot" at all.

9/11 II? Hardly!

But what does the New York Post care? Fear sells papers, and since there are no longer any standards in American journalism, what's the harm?

If you had no independent thoughts of your own, if all you knew of this so-called "terror plot" came from media coverage -- not just the Post but the American "news" media generally, you might be tempted to think this so-called "terror plot" was surprising...

...as if we could invade and destroy a country of 28 million people, and occupy the place for nearly four years going on forever, without causing any of the natives to start thinking -- and maybe even talking -- about how fantastic it would be if just one small chunk of this great big awful war could be fought in the land of the invaders.

Bob Ney Gets 30 Months For Influence-Peddling

The New York Times reports: Ex-Congressman Sentenced to 30 Months in Prison

WASHINGTON, Jan. 19 — Former [Republican] Congressman Bob Ney [of Ohio] was sentenced to 30 months in prison today for accepting tens of thousands of dollars in illegal gifts in return for using his legislative influence to help his benefactors.
...
Prosecutors had sought a sentence of 27 months and Mr. Ney’s lawyers had asked for no more than two years.
...
But Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle, of the U.S. District Court in Washington, said Mr. Ney deserved additional time because of his “significant and serious abuse of the public trust.”
...
In his plea bargain last year, Mr. Ney admitted that he had essentially sold his office to Mr. Abramoff’s lobbying operation and others in return for a series of lavish gifts.

Those gifts included overseas trips, the use of skyboxes at Washington-area sports arenas, meals, concert tickets and thousands of dollars worth of gambling chips in London casinos.

False Start For War Profiteers

There's a telling paragraph in this report from Reuters [emphasis added]:
U.S. officials say rumor of Iran strike not true:

WASHINGTON, Jan 18 (Reuters) - U.S. defense officials on Thursday said a rumored Iranian missile strike on a U.S. naval vessel in the Gulf was not true.

'No such event took place,' said one of the officials on condition of anonymity.

This is too bad, because a lot of people were getting ready to make a lot of money.

The bond market briefly pared losses on talk of possible military engagement between the United States and Iran, but turned back down after the Defense Department said the incident did not occur.

Oops! Sorry about your luck, assholes! Maybe next time.

Tensions are high between Washington and Tehran. The United States accuses Iran of supporting insurgents in Iraq and charges that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian energy program.

Reuters conveniently neglects to mention that the US has provided no evidence to support any of the allegations that have been made against Iran. So it's not surprising that they also fail to mention the evidence provided by the IAEA which indicates that the Bush administration has been lying about such things.

The Pentagon has increased the U.S. military presence in the Gulf in recent weeks, a move widely seen as a warning against provocative actions by Iran.

Well, I guess it all depends on what you mean by "widely" ... and I suppose the Oval Office is fairly wide.

But listen: the rest of the world sees this move as a provocative, aggressive step by the USA in its ongoing and none-too-subtle campaign to start a war against Iran. But Reuters is not about to tell you that either.

And this is why we have bloggers.

Fear Sells -- Want Some?

This photo is as horrifying to me as any photo of blood and guts and gore and death I have ever seen.

Look at those eyes, if you can bear it. Supremely haunting, are they not?

Now you can be supremely haunted in the privacy of your own home, for less than five thousand dollars.

But not much less.

The unforgettable green eyes of this young Afghan girl stared out at the world from the cover of National Geographic magazine in 1985, making her one of the world's most famous faces.

Photo by Steve McCurry/Magnum

Digital 16" x 20" print signed by the Magnum photographer.

16 x 20 Signed: $4,500.00

16 x 20 Signed & Framed: $4,675.00

You don't believe me? Click here.

Considering what it is, at least it's done with a bit of class ... at least compared to this!

A Poor Choice Of Words

It's hard to believe that it was less than two weeks ago. On February 3rd, I posted a piece called "Sneaky Internet Bloggers, Cheap Media Whores". That was about a "reporter" who called himself "Jeff Gannon", and who maybe wasn't a reporter at all. "Gannon" had attracted attention by asking unusually soft questions at White House gaggles and press conferences. In that post, among other things, I wrote:

I wonder what they pay him. I wonder whether he earns enough to pay for his own lipstick.

Go ahead, Jeff. Tell us. What's your price?

Two weeks in politics is a very long time. Recent events have shown that there was a lot more involved in this story than I imagined at the time. Now we know that the man who called himself "Jeff Gannon" was using a false name. And he wasn't simply a faux-reporter lobbing softball questions. He was actually a man with another profession. The "oldest" profession, if you get my drift. And that's not all. Nobody could have guessed how much bigger and uglier the story would become, and we still don't know all there is to know!

If you haven't been following the "Jeff Gannon" story, here's a good place to start, and here's a good place to continue. There are some very interesting links on these pages, and in the stories they link to. Especially the second one. As the expression goes, "Viewer discretion is advised".

Suffice it to say that my use of the word "whore" in that title was more appropriate than I could have imagined. But I cannot claim as much credit for my use of the word "cheap". If you follow those links, you'll find out that the man who called himself "Jeff Gannon" billed his clients at the rate of $200 an hour, or $1200 per weekend. That's not what you would call "inexpensive".

But on the other hand, "cheap" doesn't always mean "inexpensive". According to dictionary.com, it can also mean "Worthy of no respect; vulgar or contemptible". And even though I say so myself, the lowly and nearly frozen Winter Patriot hit that nail right on the head. "Vulgar" and "Contemptible" seem like compliments compared to what some other people are saying about the so-called reporter known as "Jeff Gannon". You can surely find any number of bloggers who are ripping him to shreds, even as we speak.

But I'm not headed in that direction. Not tonight, anyway. I simply want to make one small observation, somewhat off to the side of the gay-sex-for-hire angle. It seems that the media whore who called himself "Jeff Gannon" asked a question during an interview which showed that he had access to classified CIA information pertaining to covert agent Valerie Plame, whose cover was blown, seemingly deliberately, by someone deep within the corridors of power.

Did "Jeff Gannon" play a role in 'outing' a covert agent? It seems as if he may have. And if so, we're not talking about prostitution any more, folks. We're talking about treason. There's a lot more that went on behind closed doors, and some of it may never come out. But given what we know now, and the probability that more details are still to come, it looks to me as if the "Jeff Gannon Affair" is going to wind up being very expensive indeed. But for whom?

Governments have fallen over less. Much less, in fact. But we're talking about a government which cannot afford to fall. So what else can happen?

Stay tuned, but be very careful...

Sneaky Internet Bloggers, Cheap Media Whores

Boston.com, the online connection to the Boston Globe, has a hot item tonight, headlined: "White House-friendly reporter under scrutiny"

I want you to read the whole thing, but I'll quote a few paragraphs [and add some emphasis]:

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has provided White House media credentials to a man who has virtually no journalistic background, asks softball questions to the president and his spokesman in the midst of contentious news conferences, and routinely reprints long passages verbatim from official press releases as original news articles on his website.

It's clear that the president needs a few softball questions every now and then. But even his spokesman? Pathetic! Watch how the truth starts flowing here, and why...

[T]he question of how Gannon gets into White House press conferences is coming under intense scrutiny from critics who contend that Gannon is not a journalist but rather a White House tool to soften media coverage of Bush. The issue was raised by a media watchdog group and picked up by Internet bloggers, who linked Gannon's presence in White House briefings to recent controversies over whether the administration manipulates the flow of information to the public.

That media watchdog group, by the way, is Media Matters, and their recent reports have included this very 'complimentary' portrayal of Mr. Gannon. David Brock wrote a fantastic snarky letter to Press Secretary Scott McLellan a few days ago. The most recent piece at Media Matters concerning Gannon is here.

And the Internet bloggers the article refers to are legion. A few days ago I read a comment on another blog saying [paraphrasing now] "get used to it, this is the new reality, blogging doesn't make any difference."

I beg to differ. It is making a difference. Things are happening now that wouldn't be happening without internet bloggers. OK, OK, they're talking about other bloggers, I'm sure. They are definitely not talking about Winter Patriot. They don't even know about me. Or dozens (or hundreds) (or thousands) of other guys like me. But we're all out there, each doing our bit, and every little bit helps. You read me and I point you to somebody who knows what he's talking about. Or something like that.

But on the other hand, even the lowly [and nearly frozen] Winter Patriot has been muttering about cheap whores recently, in the media and elsewhere. Jeff Gannon is only the latest to be 'outed'.

I wonder how many more we will find. I wonder what they pay him. I wonder whether he earns enough to pay for his own lipstick.

Go ahead, Jeff. Tell us. What's your price?

Please read the newest piece on the so-called reporter, Jeff Gannon, at Media Matters. At the bottom of the page you will find some interesting contact info. Perhaps you could write a letter of encouragement to one or more of the addresses provided. But tell them you read about the whole sad situation at Media Matters. By all means, don't tell them I sent you. They don't even know about me yet. Sneaky internet bloggers...


Here's Joe Jackson:

Sunday Papers

Mother doesn’t go out any more
Just sits at home and rolls her spastic eyes
But every weekend through the door
Come words of wisdom from the world outside

If you want to know about the bishop and the actress
If you want to know how to be a star
If you want to know about the stains on the mattress
You can read it in the sunday papers, sunday papers

Mother’s wheelchair stays out in the hall
Why should she go out when the tv’s on
Whatever moves beyond these walls
She’ll know the facts when sunday comes along

If you want to know about the man gone bonkers
If you want to know how to play guitar
If you want to know about the other suckers
You can read it in the sunday papers, read it in the sunday papers

Sunday papers don’t ask no questions
Sunday papers don’t get no lies
Sunday papers don’t raise objection
Sunday papers don’t got no eyes

Brother’s heading that way now I guess
He just read something made his face turn blue
Well I got nothing against the press
They wouldn’t print it if it wasn’t true

If you want to know about the gay politician
If you want to know how to drive your car
If you want to know about the new sex position
You can read it in the sunday papers, read it in the sunday papers

Sunday papers don’t ask no questions
Sunday papers don’t get no lies
Sunday papers don’t raise objection
Sunday papers don’t got no eyes

Sunday papers don’t ask no questions
Sunday papers don’t get no lies
Sunday papers don’t raise objection
Sunday papers don’t got no eyes

Read all about it, sunday papers

What's Your Price?

A flurry of news stories lately has reminded me of this old story:

George Bernard Shaw once found himself at a dinner party, seated beside an attractive woman. "Madam," he asked, "would you go to bed with me for a thousand pounds?" The woman blushed and rather indignantly shook her head.

"For ten thousand pounds?" he asked. "No. I would not." "Then how about fifty thousand pounds?" he contined.

The colossal sum gave the woman pause, and after further reflection, she coyly replied: "Perhaps." "And if I were to offer you five pounds?" Shaw asked.

"Mr. Shaw!" the woman exclaimed. "What do you take me for!" "We have already established what you are," Shaw calmly replied. "Now we are merely haggling over the price."

Apparently, every man has his price. For some, it seems, the price is obscenely low. How much would it take for you to sell your honor? Would you do it for a million dollars? How about a quarter of a million? How about even less than that?

Editor & Publisher reports the sad story of a cheap media whore who was bought off by some much more expensive whores.

Tribune Media Services (TMS) tonight terminated its contract with columnist Armstrong Williams, effective immediately. But Williams told E&P that he plans to continue his feature via self-syndication.

TMS' action came after USA Today reported this morning that Williams had accepted $240,000 from the Bush administration to promote the No Child Left Behind education-reform law on his TV and radio shows. E & P subsequently reported that Williams had also written about NCLB in his newspaper column at least four times last year.

Meanwhile, CBS has been reporting on the shady dealings of a high-class whore. Well, maybe not high-class, but certainly high-priced.

Chances are you’ve never heard of Darleen Druyun, but she’s been spending a lot of your money — your tax money.

For 10 years, Druyun was the Air Force official who decided how much to pay for bombers, fighters, missiles -- you name it. She had such a reputation for toughness, she was commonly known as "The Dragon Lady." Which is why there is shock that Druyun, one of the most powerful women in Washington, is headed to prison.

In the biggest Pentagon scandal in 20 years, it appears that billions of dollars were doled out to the Boeing Company, as Druyun was accepting personal favors for her family.

Click on the links to read the full stories, if you think you can stand it.

Meanwhile, consider this: If you work for the government, the bribes you take will come from the private sector. But if you work for the private sector, the bribes will come from the government. Vicious circle. Vicious world.

I'm beginning to think that greed is the most destructive disease known to man. Once you catch it, you can never have enough money. You can never have enough of anything. Your life ceases to imitate art and begins to imitate Monopoly. From then on, you're doomed to go round and round, buying up everything you can get your hands on, and for what?

While you're enjoying that thought, here's another piece from Peter Hammill.

Sci-Finance

You've got some shares in a speculative venture
you've got some stock in a gilt-edged bond
you're stretched out tight by the terms of debenture
the game is on

You chase the bulls in eternal Corrida
the thought of loss is more than you can bear
you scan the index for a market leader
a tip and a prayer

You better see daylight
night comes on the City so soon
You say you are a Christian capitalist
but you dance to a different tune

Jobs for the boys and dole for the shop-floor
rationalize, strip the assets and run
If the contract stalls, then you've just got to cop more
ain't Monopoly fun?

You made some pretty deals along the way
Judas and Faust are in accord
When the revolution comes you may be blown away
but I bet you'll end up on the board

Only the money
Only the money

Sometime in the future you may realise
that the day you made your decision
to follow money as a goal
was your darkest dawn
and that, since then
you have venerated figures as deities
and, for you
people are just pawns

But that includes you
you're just an asset like the rest
and you, too, stripped naked, beg the Money-God
not to put you to the test
But He's got no further use for you
Now there is silence on the floor

Clever money-computers chatter privately
There's no people anymore

Only the money
No people anymore