MSNBC has already jettisoned Phil Donahue and Ashley Bancroft for defying W's "Ministry of Truth" edicts. On the day that Dan Rather, who charges that his superiors gave him the bum's rush because they feared Herr Karl files suit, W forces the Democrats in the Senate to criticize the MoveOn.org article "Petraeus has Betrayed Us". It is too coordinated to be merely ironic--as everything in W's reign of error has been. Petraeus presented his testimony on the anniversary of 9/11. Is that irony, or meticulous planning, to augment the propaganda value?
In another planned exercise in propaganda, W, in his latest press conference had a shill pump him with the last question of the event, providing "bubble boy" 43 with a chance to attack Democrats.
What does "House of Wisdom" make you think of?
The article "Olbermann to Bush: 'Your hypocrisy is so vast'" at
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20896378/page/2
states "A reaction to Thursday's press conference: the president was the one who interjected Gen. Petraeus into the political dialogue in the first place...
So the President, behaving a little bit more than usual, like we would all interrupt him while he was watching his favorite cartoons on the DVR, stepped before the press conference microphone and after side-stepping most of the
substantive issues like the Israeli raid on Syria, in condescending and infuriating fashion, produced a big political finish that indicates, certainly, that if it wasn't already - the annual Republican witch-hunting season is underway.
"I thought the ad was disgusting. I felt like the ad was an attack not only on
General Petraeus, but on the U.S. Military."
"And I was disappointed that not more leaders in the Democrat party spoke out
strongly against that kind of ad.
"And that leads me to come to this conclusion: that most Democrats are afraid of
irritating a left-wing group like Moveon.org or more afraid of irritating them,
than they are of irritating the United States military."
"That was a sorry deal."....
First off, it's "Democrat-ic" party.
You keep pretending you're not a politician, so stop using words your party made up. Show a little respect.
Secondly, you could say this seriously after the advertising/mugging of Senator
Max Cleland? After the swift-boating of John Kerry?
But most importantly, making that the last question?
So that there was no chance at a follow-up?
So nobody could point out, as Chris Matthews so incisively did, a week ago
tonight, that you were the one who inappropriately interjected General Petraeus
into the political dialogue of this nation in the first place!
Deliberately, premeditatedly, and virtually without precedent, you shanghaied a
military man as your personal spokesman and now you're complaining about the
outcome, and then running away from the microphone?
Eleven months ago the President's own party, the Republican National Committee, introduced this very different kind of advertisement, just nineteen days before the mid-term elections.
Bin Laden.
Al-Zawahiri's rumored quote of six years ago about having bought "suitcase
bombs."
All set against a ticking clock, and finally a blinding explosion and the dire
announcement:
"These are the stakes - vote, November 7th."
That one was ok, Mr. Bush?
Terrorizing your own people in hopes of getting them to vote for your own party
has never brought as much as a public comment from you?....
Mr. Bush, you had no right to order General Petraeus to become your front man.
And he obviously should have refused that order and resigned rather than ruin
his military career.
The upshot is and contrary it is, to the MoveOn advertisement he betrayed
himself more than he did us.
But there has been in his actions a sort of reflexive courage, some twisted
vision of duty at a time of crisis. That the man doesn't understand that serving
officers cannot double as serving political ops, is not so much his fault as it
is your good, exploitable, fortune.
But Mr. Bush, you have hidden behind the General's skirts, and today you have
hidden behind the skirts of 'the planted last question' at a news conference, to
indicate once again that your presidency has been about the tilted playing
field, about no rules for your party in terms of character assassination and
changing the fabric of our nation, and no right for your opponents or critics to
as much as respond.
That is not only un-American but it is dictatorial.
And in pimping General David Petraeus and in the violation of everything this
country has been assiduously and vigilantly against for 220 years, you have
tried to blur the gleaming radioactive demarcation between the military and the
political, and to portray your party as the one associated with the military,
and your opponents as the ones somehow antithetical to it.
You did it again today and you need to know how history will judge the line you
just crossed....
It is a line thankfully only the first of a series that makes the military
political, and the political, military.
It is a line which history shows is always the first one crossed when a
democratic government in some other country has started down the long, slippery, suicidal slope towards a Military Junta.
Get back behind that line, Mr. Bush, before some of your supporters mistake your dangerous transgression, for a call to further politicize our military."
The Raw Story article "Bush bashes Democrats over 'disgusting' MoveOn ad" at
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Bush_bashes_Dems_over_MoveOn_ad_0920.html
states "At the tail end of his press conference, Bush gave an extended diatribe on the evils of a 10-day-old anti-war advertisement and took an opportunity to link Democrats to the attack on a top general.
The president called the group's full-page New York Times ad "disgusting," and he accused Democrats of caring more about the feelings of liberal activists than the US military.
"I felt like the ad was an attack not only on General Petraeus but on the U.S. military. And I was disappointed that not more leaders in the Democrat party spoke out strongly against that kind of ad," Bush said. "That leads me to come to this conclusion: that most Democrats are (more) afraid of irritating a left-wing group like MoveOn.org ... than they are of irritating the United States military. That was a sorry deal."
Eli Pariser, Executive Director of MoveOn.org's Political Action Committee, fired back at the president's comments.
"What's disgusting is that the president has more interest in political attacks than developing an exit strategy to get our troops out of Iraq and end this awful war," Pariser said after the press conference.
"The president has no credibility on Iraq: he lied repeatedly to the American people to get us into the war. Most Americans oppose the war and want us to get out. Right now, there are about 168,000 American soldiers in Iraq, caught in the crossfire of that country's unwinnable civil war, and the president has betrayed their trust and the trust of the American people."
Bush was responding to a question from the Washington Examiners' Bill Sammon, who the president refers to as "big stretch." Thursday's response from Bush was more partisan and intense than in response to a previous attempt by Sammon to get Bush to swipe at Democrats from the podium.In December 2003, Sammon asked whether Bush would "agree or disagree" with the Republican National Committee's assessment that Howard Dean musing about Bush knowing in advance about 9/11 "borders on hate speech."
Bush would only say, "There's a time for politics, and I uh ... It's an absurd insinuation." That was four months before the White House finally released the infamous "Bin Laden Determined to Stike in US" warning delivered to Bush in August 2001.
The article "U.S. Working to Reshape Iraqi Detainees" at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/18/AR2007091802203.html
states "The U.S. military has introduced "religious enlightenment" and other education programs for Iraqi detainees, some of whom are as young as 11, Marine Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone, the commander of U.S. detention facilities in Iraq, said yesterday.
Stone said such efforts, aimed mainly at Iraqis who have been held for more than a year, are intended to "bend them back to our will" and are part of waging war in what he called "the battlefield of the mind." Most of the younger detainees are held in a facility that the military calls the "House of Wisdom."
My friends who were in Vietnam during the last GOP failed quagmire explained to me what being educated meant. It meant abusing others in matters such as dropping napalm and forcing captured Vietnamese to commit perverted acts upon each other. The above article said that the youngest prisoners in the "House of Wisdom" are 11. That in itself is an atrocity.
Soon we'll be seeing US cops or reserves arresting more and more of our youthful citizens-the "baby boom" know better to give the "man" a chance to abuse them as they grew up with "Tricky Dick's" "men in blue" abusing-yes-even murdering, youth for protesting the war-most notably at Kent State, for speaking out against big bro 43. He has stacked the US Supreme Court with ghouls such as Alito who back in the days of Ronnie prepared legal arguments supporting the "unitary executive" powers.
Soon, if W gets his way, right here on US streets teenage boys and girls who go too far will hear the phrase "You better watch it punk!" as they are getting clubbed and carted off to the US' "House of Wisdom."
Yes, people like Olbermann are rare, but what saved us back in "Tricky Dick's" days was a powerful 4th estate. Goons like Sammons are the anti-thesis of the press searching for the truth.
