Just as an aside

Five Deferments Dick doesn't get to tell me to support the occupation.

Their pet General Petraeus doesn't get to call me a traitor for speaking against the occupation.

Glenn Reynolds has been shamelessly wrong since day one, and continues the tradition of Chimp-fluffing that has made him a household name for "that guy on the Internet that I've never heard of who's always wrong".

And as for your pledge, Hugh Hewitt? Bite me.

Waiting to Decide

Looks like the Decider has another week to pull some kind of brand-new lame-ass justification for the Iraq occupation out of his ass. Hat tip to the BBC.

Here's a chunk out of the article - I suggest y'all read the whole thing - and I'll toss in a little emphasis if you don't mind:

The BBC was told by a senior administration source that the speech setting out changes in Mr Bush's Iraq policy is likely to come in the middle of next week.

Its central theme will be sacrifice.

The speech, the BBC has been told, involves increasing troop numbers.

The exact mission of the extra troops in Iraq is still under discussion, according to officials, but it is likely to focus on providing security rather than training Iraqi forces.

Look for my official response in the middle of next week. Unless the "sacrifice" and "troop increase" involve sending Jenna and Barbara to serve in Iraq, the likely theme of my response will be "Fuck off, asshole."

Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkey Says We're Not Winning in Iraq

Yeah, let's start off with the punchline. From the Washington Post:

President Bush acknowledged for the first time yesterday that the United States is not winning the war in Iraq and said he plans to expand the overall size of the "stressed" U.S. armed forces to meet the challenges of a long-term global struggle against terrorists.

Don't worry your little heads, Bushites. The only thing that makes the Chimp more resolute about fighting a pointless, illegal occupation against a popular insurgency is losing a pointless, illegal occupation against a popular insurgency.

And, in this article, we find out why the Chimp Decided on Robert "Juvenile, Insulting Nickname Coming Soon" Gates as Secretary of Defense over such luminaries as Joe "Cocksucker" Lieberman. Apparently Mr. Gates has the magic power of pulling brand-new U.S. soldiers out of his ass:

In another turnaround, Bush said he has ordered Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to develop a plan to increase the troop strength of the Army and Marine Corps, heeding warnings from the Pentagon and Capitol Hill that multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan are stretching the armed forces toward the breaking point. "We need to reset our military," said Bush, whose administration had opposed increasing force levels as recently as this summer.

Without a draft (which, if the numbers for the pre-war protests and support of the curent occupation are anything like accurate, would have the American people pulling the White House down around his ears), how the hell are we going to "reset our military"? You did tell him that actual people are killing and dying in Iraq, right? 'Cause it sounds to me like he thinks he's playing World of Warcraft, and a server reset will make everything OK.

Mark Your Calendars

On December 18th, the President of the United States will give a speech in which he will lay out (in broad strokes, of course) the strategy that he has Decided on for the occupation of Iraq.

Link to Washington Post article here.

As has been pointed out by wiser people than I, namely Atrios and LithiumCola, his choices basically boil down to doing more of what we're doing now, giving up fighting insurgents and going after al-Qaeda, or siding with the Shiites.

We've been there longer than WWII and the Chimp is still trying to figure out, at the most basic level, what the hell we're doing there and how the hell to keep doing it so that he can still call himself a War Prezdint.

It would be hilarious if it weren't for all the people dying.

And a-One, and a-Two...

Looks like it's the Chimpster's turn to get thrown under the bus.

With Kenneth Adelman and Henry Kissinger coming out against Bush's Iraq War Pony Hunt and Pixie Resuscitation Plan, one wonders if it's become time for the "conservatives" to try to rescue their ideology by claiming that the failure was not them trying to dictate terms to reality, but rather the failure of the Bush administration to be the right kind of "conservative". Or "conservative" enough. Or something.

Look, you've supported the Chimp for six years, at least - if "support" can be considered the proper term for a level of public fellatio that would make Monica Lewinsky blush. You had the House and the Senate enthusiastically rubber-stamping the shit that the Chimp-in-Chief flung about the Oval Office. You don't get to run away from Captain Thirty-One Percent now.

On the bright side, though, if the Gang O' Perverts has come to the realization that they'd better dump the Chimp if any of them want to have jobs in 2008 - well, suddenly impeachment looks a lot more likely.

Oh, and "conservative" is in quotes because I've seen precious little of the hallmarks of true conservative thought - limited federal government, strict adherence to the Constitution, and fiscal responsibility.

Because A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

And this grim, grim picture is brought to you by our very own Central Command. I'm pretty sure it's not classified anymore.

This chart, to your left, graphs our progress in Iraq. The green bit on the left - labeled "Peace" - is what the hard-core Bushites would have you believe is happening. You know, flowers, candy, schools getting painted, that kind of thing.

The red part at the right is what the reality-based community thinks is happening in Iraq - sectarian violence, ethnic cleansing, partitioning - all fancy terms for civil war.

The arrow marked Current - which would be what the people actually occupying Iraq think - is in the red end.

I think the argument is over. However, I'm sure I'll hear about how this is all a plot by George Soros, Hillary Clinton, those cut-and-runners in Central Command, and the liberal media.

The Week in Review: Fascism, Torture, and Nukes, Oh My!

This week, we found out what they'd been doing to Jose Padilla during the three and a half years he's been incarcerated. And, once again, we were unsurprised.

Here's Glenn Greenwald's take on it, and the motion to dismiss(pdf) that describes his treatment. Good thing he's an American citizen - they hadn't waterboarded him. Yet.

Why should you care? Here, let Lambert over in the Corrente Building lay out, from the "Military Commissions Act of 2006", the provisions that kill habeas corpus and allow Bush to disappear you.

We have some argument as to The Lancet's figure, via a Johns Hopkins study, of 650,000 Iraqi civilians killed due to the occupation. Most of the arguments, of course, from people who haven't read the paper and wouldn't understand the methodology of the survey if they did pulling competing figures out of their asses.

GENERAL GEORGE CASEY, US COMMANDER IN IRAQ: I have not seen the study; that 650,000 number seems way beyond any number that I have seen. I've not seen a number higher than 50,000 and so I don't give that much credibility at all.

REPORTER: The 50,000 number, where did you see that from?

GENERAL CASEY: I don't remember, but I have seen it over time.

REPORTER: That is that a US military estimate?

GENERAL CASEY: I don't remember where I saw it.

Let me give you a hint, Gen. Casey. Just before you flushed.

As far as North Korea goes there is more substantiative discussion, which I cannot mock as easily as poor Gen. Casey, as to whether or not North Korea detonated a nuke and if they did, whether or not it worked. The one consensus appears to be that ol' Chimpy screwed up once again - unless of course you're one of his codpiece-worshipers, then it's because Clinton had sex.

Wrapping it up - I've been keeping an eye out for software and equipment in order that I may attempt one of these newfangled "pod-casts", although God only knows where I'd find the time to make one. Probably in 2017.

Update: Thanks for the heads-up on the typos. Dammit.

Well, They Did It.

Looks like North Korea successfully tested a nuclear weapon.

From those wild-eyed leftists at Financial Times:

North Korea's probable test of a nuclear weapon on Monday has triggered the second nuclear crisis in 13 years on the Korean peninsula.

In 1993, North Korea announced it would pull out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, leaving it free to divert nuclear material from its energy reactors to make a nuclear weapon and setting off a round of crisis diplomacy led by the Clinton administration. The result was the so-called agreed framework, which - in return for supplies of fuel oil to North Korea - froze most aspects of Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme for the rest of the decade.

The agreed framework was in effect consigned to history when the Bush administration came to power in 2001. The new administration argued that although the road to a plutonium-based nuclear bomb had been frozen, the North Koreans were cheating by attempting to develop a uranium-based bomb that was not explicitly addressed by the agreement.

That five years later, North Korea has tested a nuclear weapon will be widely interpreted as a sign of the failure of the tougher approach favoured by the Bush team.

Props to DemFromCT for pointing it out this morning. Welshman also opines - and El Piscador called it.

Oh, and reading Sadly, No this morning, I was caught by Brad's take on it:

In a normal country with a normal media, watching the craziest country on Earth get nuclear weapons would be a big deal. It would also be seen as a crippling blow to Bush’s doctrine of preemption, which stated that invading Iraq would somehow, someway deter countries like Iran and North Korea from pursuing nuclear wepoans. But we don’t live in a normal country, with normal people or a normal press. We live in America, a country where nobody reads, where we’re taught to be uncritical, and where we’re bombarded by ridiculous amounts of advertising each and every day. What I’m trying to say is, we’re fucking stupid.