iowa underground blog

One of Iowa’s own has done us proud.

She begins thusly…

Bruce Bartlett, The Cato Institute, Andrew Sullivan, George Packer, William F. Buckley, Sandra Day O’Connor, Republican voters in Indiana and all the rest of you newly-minted dissenters from Bush’s faith-based reality seem, right now, to be glorying in your outrage, which is always a pleasure and feels, at the time, as if it is having an effect, but those of us who have been anti-Bush from day 1 (defined as the day after the stolen 2000 election) have a few pointers for you that should make your transition more realistic.

and continues her evisceration of the conservative culture of corruption and hypocrisy in her blog entry at The Huffington Post here.

Another quickie excerpt:

President Bush is your creation. When the US Supreme Court humiliated itself in 2000 by handing the presidency to Bush even though two of the justices (Scalia and Thomas) had open conflicts of interest, you did not object. When the Bush administration adopted an “Anything but Clinton” policy that resulted in ignoring and dismissing all warnings of possible terrorist attacks on US soil, you went along with and made excuses for Bush. When the Bush administration allowed the corrupt Enron corporation to swindle California ratepayers and taxpayers in a last ditch effort to balance their books in 2001, you laughed at the Californians and ignored the links between Enron and the administration. When it was evident that the evidence for the war in Iraq was cooked and that State Department experts on the Middle East were not behind the war and so it was going to be run as an exercise in incompetence, you continued to attack those who were against the war in vicious terms and to defend policies that simply could not work. On intelligent design, global warming, doctoring of scientific results to reflect ideology, corporate tax giveaways, the K Street project, the illegal redistricting of Texas, torture at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, the Terry Schiavo fiasco, and the cronyism that led to the destruction of New Orleans you have failed to speak out with integrity or honesty, preferring power to truth at every turn. Bush does what he wants because you have let him.

• tristero

It’s always interesting to hear or read what U.S. soldiers have to say about the war in Iraq. AlterNet’s Terrence McNally interviewed three Iraq war veterans who are attending the Sundance Film Festival. A few choice quotes from the interview:

SEAN HUZE: It all comes down to weapons of mass destruction, for me. And they weren’t there. Dick Cheney’s going around accusing all of us of being revisionist now. But if you’re trying to say that the war in Iraq was about anything other than WMD, that’s revisionism. I don’t care how many times Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, whoever, says that this war was about anything other than WMD, or that we were given a justification or rationale other than WMD.

I’ve got a long memory, and it was only a couple of years ago. I know why I was sent to Iraq; I know why I went to war. And when that proved to be false, I think that’s when we lost our credibility and our world standing. And ultimately we’re in a quagmire right now.

... Read the rest of this entry »

But A Civil War…

Situation in Iraq Is Civil War
According to the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition, the definition of a civil war is a “war between political factions or regions within the same country.” That is exactly what is going on in Iraq, not a global war on terrorism, as the President continues to portray it.

93 percent of those fighting in Iraq are Iraqis. A very small percentage of the fighting is being done by foreign fighters. Our troops are caught in between the fighting. 80 percent of Iraqis want us out of there and 45 percent think it is justified to kill American troops.

Iraqis went to the polls in droves on December 15th and rejected the secular, pro-democracy candidates and those who the Administration in Washington propped up. Preliminary vote results indicate that Iyad Allawi, the pro-American Prime Minister, received about 8 percent of the vote and Ahmad Chalabi, Iraq’s current Oil Minister and close associate of the U.S. Iraq war planners, received less than 1 percent. According to General Vines, the top operational commander in Iraq, “the vote is reported to be primarily along sectarian lines, which is not particularly heartening.” The new government he said “must be a government by and for Iraqis, not sects.”

The ethnic and religious strife in Iraq has been going on, not for decades or centuries, but for millennia. These particular explosive hatreds and tensions will be there if our troops leave in six months, six years or six decades. It is time to re-deploy our troops and to re-focus our attention on the real threats posed by global terrorism.

Huffington Post

Murtha just recently visited Iraq and said this after visiting with troops
and generals over there.

What do Democrats need to do? Repeat the saying over and over and over..
“Iraq Is Not Part Of The War On Terrorism…As The President Portrays It… But A Civil War…”
“Iraq Is Not Part Of The War On Terrorism…As The President Portrays It… But A Civil War…”
“Iraq Is Not Part Of The War On Terrorism…As The President Portrays It… But A Civil War…”
“Iraq Is Not Part Of The War On Terrorism…As The President Portrays It… But A Civil War…”
“Iraq Is Not Part Of The War On Terrorism…As The President Portrays It… But A Civil War…”
“Iraq Is Not Part Of The War On Terrorism…As The President Portrays It… But A Civil War…”

People might catch on in between watching American Idol, Supper Nanny, and Survivor.

• pstans

Bush was against unauthorized and illegal wiretaps…
before he was for them.

Actually that quote isn’t quite accurate. Bush was never against illegal and unauthorized wiretaps. He just wanted the American public to believe he was. Kind of like he wanted the American public to believe the Iraq occupation and invasion had something to do with WMD’s. All of which makes Bush little more than a shameless liar. But then we already knew that.

Except, you know…..it’s not funny.

• tristero

for your end of the year enjoyment and consideration.

See also: Wiki-PNAC and PNAC homepage.

• tristero

Despite what has become Dubya’s habitual penchant for tongue-twisted weaselism, the most troubling aspect of his performance this evening was how detatched and unaffected he was when talking about the (Lehrer’s numbers now) 30,000+ thousand Iraqi civilian deaths and the 2100+ American deaths. Pawns in the game to this guy. Shit happens.

And what the hell is up with that omnipresent jaw twitch? Perhaps the question we should be asking is this: Precisely what kind of psychotropic medications is the leader of the free world now on and how long has he been on them?

“hehhh…We tapped your home, too Jim.
Can’t be too careful, heh he.”

You can review the festivities for yourself here.

-tristero