Comments Posted By mkultra
Displaying 11 To 20 Of 22 Comments
NANCY PELOSI, PEACEMAKER OR KLUTZ?
Gosh, if only the wingnuts out there could get as worked up about the Iraqi fiasco as the do about Pelosi ....
Alas, it is not to be.
So it's ok to hand Iraq over to Iran, as Bush has done, but it's not ok for Pelosi to take a trip to the Middle East.
Now I understand.
Comment Posted By mkultra On 5.04.2007 @ 18:33
MICHAEL WARE NEEDS TO COME HOME
Ware's cynicism is interfering with the reporting?
No Rick - Drudge's LIES are interfering with the reporting. Millions believe Drudge. Drudge lies. Millions believe lies.
Wingers lie. It's what they do. And then they get caught lying. And then they dissemble.
Ware needs to stay right where he is. If wingers obviously need to lie about him, he must be doing something right.
Comment Posted By mkultra On 2.04.2007 @ 15:51
Hey Rick
Why don't you have the guts to call all these other wingnuts liars?
Ware did not mock or heckle anyone. And the video is there to prove it.
But who you gonna believe, Powerline or your own lying eyes?
So a bunch of winger bloggers lie and lie and lie and it is Ware who has a problem?
WTF is wrong with you?
Comment Posted By mkultra On 2.04.2007 @ 15:43
SENATE SUGGESTS TELLING THE JIHADIS WHEN WE'RE LEAVING
Keep sending Bush bills with timelines. Congress approves funds, Bush vetoes funds. Congress approves funds, Bush vetoes funds.
So who is failing to fund the troops?
Comment Posted By mkultra On 27.03.2007 @ 21:02
SHHHH...DON'T TELL THE MSM, BUT WE'RE WINNING THE WAR IN IRAQ
"But in reality, the only people who seem to be wringing their hands in despair (or rubbing them together in glee) are the mainstream media and the left who dote lovingly on every reported attack, even if no one knows whether it is related to sectarian strife or not."
So which category does Bill Buckley - the father of modern conservatism - fall into? The MSM or the left? How about George Will? He said recently that Iraq is experiencing a civil war now. I realize to the the denzeins of this site, George Will may seem to the left of Noam Chomsky. But most level headed folks consider him a right wing pundit.
When you make sweeping generalizations such as this one, you discredit yourself and your argument. It is not merely the left or the MSM that is wringing its hands in despair.
Here is Cliff May from the National Review, responding to John Derbyshire:
"Derb, I take your point and while I think Ralph is always smart, insightful and worth reading, I can’t honestly say that I’m not increasingly pessimistic.
Al-Qaeda, the Baathists and the Iranian mullahs all believe that, in the Leninist construction, "the worse the better."
They believe that a civil war would drive the U.S. out and leave Iraq as a bloody corpse -- on which they would happily feed.
In other words, they have a strategy. What's our counter-strategy? To hope that Iraqis refuse to go along? Hope is not a strategy."
Cliff May is the President of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy, a conservative think tank. He is a former spokesperson for the RNC.
Finally, you have the nerve to say the following:
"To not acknowledge this is to practice the same kind of delusion you are accusing me of being held captive by with one glaring difference; my “delusion†is supported by the facts on the ground. Yours is supported by wishful thinking and biased reporting.
Read this piece by Ralph Peters in Real Clear Politics for more of the same “delusions.†(HT: Michelle Malkin)"
You cite Ralph Peters? A guy who makes an occasional trip to Iraq, embeds himself for a few days (why does he need to be embedded if things are going well?) and then declares things are going swimmingly. And then you have the gall to cite him as a source on the ground.
Are you trying to destroy your credibility?
If you want facts on the ground, I suggest that you read someone who actually has been living in Baghdad for most of the last three years, Chris Allbritton at Back to Iraq. He makes short work of Mr. Peters' "observations" - a sample:
****
Among the claims in his slanderous column: “The Iraqi Army has confounded its Western critics, performing extremely well last week. And the people trust their new army to an encouraging degree.â€The Iraqi Army — and police, for that matter — stood by while Shi’ite militias ran rampant through Sunni neighborhoods. They only took up the security positions when the Shi’ite clerics, including Moqtada al-Sadr, had already calmed down the worst of the violence. That’s not “performing extremely well,†unless by “extremely well,†you mean not confronting the enemies and keeping your head down until it’s safe to come out. That’s usually called “hiding.â€
He also says we western reporters don’t get out on the streets, which is patently untrue. I don’t get out as often as I’d like, but I do get out. My colleagues at TIME, who look much less western than I do, get out much more. And, unlike Peters, we don’t travel with a big-ass armed convoy under the protection of the U.S. military.
He then further slanders Ellen Knickmeyer, of the Washington Post, when he says, “Did any Western reporter go to that morgue and count the bodies — a rough count would have done it — before telling the world the news? I doubt it.â€
Well, actually, Ralph, I know Ellen. And yes, she did go down to the morgue. While there are many issues with her story, what is undeniable is that she risked a hell of a lot more than you did when she put her life in jeopardy to go down there.
Then he says, “If reporters really care, it’s easy to get out on the streets of Baghdad. The 506th Infantry Regiment — and other great military units — will take journalists on their patrols virtually anywhere.†Well, no, they won’t. Some reporters I know are having trouble getting embeds because they’re not the “right†reporters. They don’t write the “right†kind of stories — meaning they don’t follow the military’s playbook.
It’s more than a little churlish to say, “We’ll take you anywhere, as long as you’re not too liberal/French/whatever†and then turn around and criticize those you refuse to take with you as cowards. If they situation is so rosy, Mr. Peters, why on earth do I need to embed in the first place? Believe me, I’d much rather travel around without a military entourage. You tend to get more truthful answers from Iraqis when they’re not surrounded by soldiers with big guns, after all.
Then, this guy with a “background as an intelligence officer†goes on to say there’s no civil war because, by gosh, he sure didn’t see any thing like that. And the Iraqis cheered the Americans!
Let me try to paint the picture a little more clearly, Mr. Peters: When Sunnis cheer the Americans, it’s not because things are rosy, it’s because they’re more scared of the Shi’ites than they are of you. Sunnis in Baghdad I’ve spoken with have told me they would rather be arrested by the Americans than by the government forces, because at least now the Americans won’t torture you as badly. They have no love for Americans, they just know who is best able to protect them from their neighbors.
Yesterday, the general in charge of the Iraqi Army division in Baghdad was killed by a sniper while he was on patrol. An investigation has been opened because there are suspicions he was killed for being Sunni by one of his Shi’ite troops.
To be blunt: We are as close to full-scale civil war as we’ve ever been. We are one more bombing, massacre or atrocity from a national bloodletting. But even if that happens, there will be ebbs and flows. Just because people aren’t curled up in the fetal position under their beds all the time doesn’t mean there’s not a war on of some kind. In Lebanon, for 15 years, people went to the beach, cafés, bars and, in general, tried to live a normal life. For long stretches, a neighborhood would be calm. And then the shells would come, or a running street battle would break out and civilians would go running inside to hide. The violence would eventually pass, like a breaking wave, and they would come out into the light. That’s the way war works, and that’s what’s happening in Baghdad right now.
Finally, two things: Mr. Peters says he has a background in intelligence. And he says he’s been hitching rides with this unit, rather than being assigned to it. He also makes what may be an unintentionally ironic comment when he criticized Iraqi stringers: “The Iraqi stringers have cracked the code: The Americans don’t pay for good news. So they exaggerate the bad.â€
First of all, the Americans do pay for good news. They have in the past, when American officers wrote stories and paid local papers to run them. These happy tales invariably painted a rosier picture than was warranted.
Secondly, Gen. George Casey, commander of U.S. troops here, told reporters in a news conference three days ago that the pay-for-play program was on-going. “We were operating within our authorities and responsibilities,†he said, and added that he had not received an order to stop the program. “And, right now, based on the results of the investigation, I do not intend to in the near term.â€
Thirdly, just what is Mr. Peters doing here? A former intelligence officer, riding around Baghdad, painting a rosy picture? I may just be assuming stuff here — hell, if Ralph can do it, so can I — but is Mr. Peters one of those story-planting Americans? Was he out getting material and pictures? And has he taken his skills at writing happy stories to the American public?
Peters’ little yarns sure sounds nice, but he sounds either desperately clueless or willfully blind. Officials in the American embassy, at least, are very worried that civil war is upon us, and it’s surely no coincidence that Casey has a reputation for not wanting to hear bad news. And so Peters continues to think because he rolls around in an armored convoy and no one takes a shot at him, there’s no civil war. As someone I’m sure he admires once said, “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.â€
*****
The most significant obstacle to our success in Iraq has been an unwillingness to admit the truth of what is really happening in Iraq - from "being welcomed as liberators" to "dead enders," the Bush administration has time and again failed to admit the reality that is Iraq. Its synchophants have merely compounded the problem. I would submit that Mr. Peters and those who echo his jingosim fall squarely in that category.
BTW - how many deaths a day before we get to civil war? 100? 200?
Perhaps what is most frustating about this post is that it attempts to do exactly what the Shia thugs who run the government are attempting to do: suppress the truth:
****
BAGHDAD, March 8 -- Days after the bombing of a Shiite shrine unleashed a wave of retaliatory killings of Sunnis, the leading Shiite party in Iraq's governing coalition directed the Health Ministry to stop tabulating execution-style shootings, according to a ministry official familiar with the recording of deaths.
The official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named because he feared for his safety, said a representative of the Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, ordered that government hospitals and morgues catalogue deaths caused by bombings or clashes with insurgents, but not by execution-style shootings.
A statement this week by the U.N. human rights department in Baghdad appeared to support the account of the Health Ministry official. The agency said it had received information about Baghdad's main morgue -- where victims of fatal shootings are taken -- that indicated "the current acting director is under pressure by the Interior Ministry in order not to reveal such information and to minimize the number of casualties."
The U.N. office said it had not confirmed the information about the morgue and had been unable so far to obtain an accounting of the toll from Iraqi authorities.
****
You, Ralph Peters, and the Shia thugs who run the interior ministry appear to be on the same page. Wonder why that is.
Comment Posted By mkultra On 14.03.2006 @ 13:08
Now, now, scrapiron, quit appealing to the rational parts of our brains.
To continue what I said earlier, the hearings serve the Bush cause well because, although the spying is clearly illegal, the somewhat complicated nature of the legal issue won't get communicated thru the hearings. The Bush administration doesn't need to win the legal case or even tie, if scrapiron is representative of GOP supporters. Although others have said it more eloquently, the GOP case is that Al Qaeda is so big and scary that Bush must be able to break the law. (Even though he's not - or just FISA, not Article II, or whatever. The administration is still not clear on this point. Of course, when you have a bad argument, and have said inconsistent things in the past, that tends to happen.)
No GOP senator would ever do anything to harm Bush in the NSA hearings. Ever. The Dems are in the minority. Hence the outcome of these hearings is immaterial, and thus so are the hearings.
Comment Posted By mkultra On 6.02.2006 @ 22:10
Make that "affect."
Comment Posted By mkultra On 6.02.2006 @ 21:50
AUMF does not authorize the wiretaps at issue. The case is not even close. Moreover, references in AUMF to the so-called War Powers Act of 1978 confirm that the necessary prerequisities to the exceptions idenitified in FISA did not and do not exist.
The legal case is so weak. I used to write appeals in California for criminal defendants. We were required to make even the weakest of arguments as part of our duty to defend our clients. When I wrote them, I knew they were weak, but I also knew I would not be subject to sanction, given that I was representing a criminal defendant. In short, I was making a loser argument that I knew was a loser, but that I had to make anyway.
That is the position that Gonzalez is in. No one who understands the legal arguments takes them seriously at all, excepts those paid or ideologically driven to do so.
The legal case is clear - even Specter knows that. The real issue on the table is when the president has clearly broken the law, and his party is the majority in Congress, what can or should be done. That is the heart of what is going on right now. It is a test for our republican form of government. How it comes out has the potential to effect the country for generations to come.
History will not judge kindly those who defend the President's actions. They will be lumped together with those who defended the Alien and Sedition Act, the internment of Japanese during World War II, et al.
Comment Posted By mkultra On 6.02.2006 @ 21:23
A DEAD WRONG HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE OF 9/11
The average man in the street mattered then as he does now because the average man in the street voted then, as he does now, for those who formulate national security policy. If Americans believed that AQ was a non-threat, Bush couldn't do jack. No American is going to agree to sacrifice liberties for a non-threat. And Bush wouldn't be trying to do it if he didn't believe he could get political support.
Quit analyzing a political issue in a political vacuum.
The other point is this: You didn't live thru the same Cold War I did. I remember nuclear holocaust as a real possibility. I don't remember Reagan, for instance, ever telling me that the Russians will never send the nukes and that I had nothing to worry about. Do you? Do you remember "The Day After"? I remember watching it thinking not only that it could happen, but it would be worse if it did. And why have those "duck and cover" exercises, and do all the other things people did then to prepare for a nuclear war if MAD made it impossible.
Stop re-writing history to satisfy your current polticial needs. Thank you.
Comment Posted By mkultra On 28.01.2006 @ 22:56
THE LAW OF INTENDED CONSEQUENCES
BTW - where did you get your law degree from? Where did you sit for the bar? And why is that every winger who has never spent a day in law school feels qualified to talk about the issues?
Comment Posted By mkultra On 28.12.2005 @ 13:19
