Wanted: Arabic Speakers!

...unless you're teh gay. This is just so stupid it pains me to read it. So when Al Qaeda detonates a dirty bomb in Los Angeles harbor, I can rest easy knowing my government didn't allow any homos to translate the vital clue that might have prevented the whole thing. Because, you know, they might get teh gay all over it. Or something. Idiots.

"Military Dictatorship" Is Such An Ugly Phrase...

...I prefer "Unitary Executive." Bush Administration lawyerbots claim the President has the unfettered authority to send in the military to arrest US Citizens on US soil and lock them up forever without charges, much less a trial. And of course, none of this reviewable by any court. Now, here's the challenge: I challenge Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to publicly declare that they denounce this position and will never assert it in court. Get cracking, you two!

Happy Mother's Day!

The US Military has been carrying on an illegal, covert, and widespread system of deliberate propaganda in support of the war (and of course torture) for years now. Oh, and the MSM refuses to so much as breathe a word about it now that the story has broken.
Yawn...oh what? Sorry, were you talking? I was busy reading about Obama's bowling score and his really scary black preacher who hates America.

UPDATE: Reid promises hearings, bless his little heart.

Meanwhile, Back at the War...

...it appears as though the US military has been drug into an all-out civil war between Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Shiite militia allies and Shiite militias loyal to his rival Moqtada al-Sadr; that Maliki didn't bother to consult with the US before attacking Basra; and that Maliki is losing. Badly. Yeah, I definately need some rest now.

UPDATE: Maliki achieves a humiliating compromise, declares victory, and runs home.

UPDATE 2: It gets even better. Apparently, it was the IRANIANS who worked out the cease-fire when a group of Iraqi lawmakers flew to the Holy City of Qom. It's hard to envision a more obvious sign that we have lost very nearly all control over the situation.

UPDATE 3: Now Iraqi legislators are saying that not only did Iran handle the ceasefire, but Maliki was out of the loop and "only informed" of the deal once it was done.

Okay, I Know, I Know...

...I said I was on vacation, but I had to go to court today anyway, and I couldn't let pass without comment the culmination of Dubya's campaign to desecrate every single line of the Constitution: inventing a "pocket veto" that doesn't exist in order to kill a bipartisan Defense Appropriations bill because our puppet regime in Baghdad is miffed. Kind of makes you wonder if this White House is racing to see how low it can go and how ludicrous it can be before January 20, 2009, doesn't it?

UPDATE: Another view suggesting Dubya was legally right on the pocket veto and just outfaked the Democrats. And that the veto really has little if anything to do with Iraq.

The Forever War

In order to forever enshrine the Iraq debacle in American foreign policy, Bush is planning to ink a status of forces agreement (not a treaty; treaties require Senate approval) with Iraq, undoubtedly for a permanent US military base or bases. Yes, this would undoubtedly guarantee that he will be succeeded by a Democrat, but frankly he doesn't care. Bush is perfectly happy to destroy his own party in favor of his war.

Tell It To the Marines

The latest person repulsed by the Bush Administration's farce of a kangaroo court system in Gitmo.

Revolt of the Generals

An excellent piece from the San Diego Union-Tribune on the unprecedented (at least since the Civil War) number of general officers publicly denouncing a President's foreign policy. While I tend to agree with the critiques, I'm not too sanguine about the underlying motivations of those who suddenly feel compelled to speak out, nor am I sure how I feel about the overall effect. Is this a threat to civillian control (however incompetent) of the military? What would Democrats have thought if 20 retired Generals blasted Bill Clinton? Any of you currently serving in uniform, what do you think?

The Parade of CYA Memoirs Continues...

...first Alan Greenspan (who abandoned his own fiscal principals to endorse Bush's multi-millionaires tax relief package) goes all MoveOn.org on Dubya, now Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, one of the chief architects of the Iraq fiasco, blasts Bush as "incompetent." Nice of all these guys to realize what a train-wreck of an Administration they were working for....AFTER it's too late for them to do anything about it. More profiles in courage.

Happy Armed Forces Day!

Until they all come home...

Supporting the Troops?

According the Great and Powerful Kos, a recent Military Times poll of active-duty military personnel (as opposed to, say, cyber-chickenhawks safe here at home) shows only 38% support the President's proposed "surge" in troop levels in Iraq; only 35% approve of the President's handling of the war; and only 41% think we should've gone to war with Iraq in the first place. There are two astonishing things about this survey: one, it's skewed towards older military personnel and the officer corps, who are almost always reliably more conservative than short-timers or enlisted men and two, the Main Stream Media is not reporting this at all. Okay, I lied. there's only one astonishing thing.

This Can't Be Good

The ongoing meatgrinder of Iraq is causing the US Army to slowly but surely run out of equipment. Doesn't anybody in this Administration know how to run a war?

Whu--?

Left-Wingers and Right-Wingers find common ground in their mutually complete and utter inability to grasp the obvious in Charlie Rangel's proposal to reinstate the draft. Jesse Jackson, on the other hand, does get it. And while a military draft is really not a realistic or viable option, I do hold out hope for some form of mandatory national service to break the culture of self-absorption and greed that seems to have consumed the nation in the last 20-30 years.