Another Bad Confluence

Events didn’t combine to make George look stupid; they just confirmed he is stupid

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
9/10/06
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/VRWC/badweek.htm

As big a public relations nightmare “Path to 9/11" has proved to be for Disney, ABC, and the far right echo chamber, it was actually good news for Putsch, who was going through what might be described as “the week from hell,” or maybe “a bad heir day.” “Path” was a welcome distraction.

First, Putsch wanted to show the world that he was willing to be tough on terrorism, and so he submitted a new military tribunal plan that basically was a request for Congress to give the crimes against humanity Putsch was already committing their stamp of approval.

Just to show what a noble and reasonable guy he was, he kind of went “aw shucks,” and owned up to the fact that he had been committing crimes against humanity right along and lying to everyone about it.

That George! What a kidder!

Seems that yes, the US had been holding people in gulags overseas. Everyone knew that, but the admin had been denying it. But now that the US has admitted that they have concentration camps and hold people without due process or humane treatment, maybe Congress could just sort of acknowledge that it’s already being done, and clear some of the red tape out of the way?

Oddly enough, the people George expected to see go along with this didn’t. The Pentagon was openly appalled, with one Pentagon spokesman telling NPR, “No nation – no CIVILIZED nation – has a system in which the accused is not permitted to see the evidence and charges being brought against him.” Republicans blew off Putsch’s proposal entirely, stating that they would pursue their own plan – one which DOES incorporate discovery process and due process.

As Iraq continued to disintegrate, due in large part to the American occupation of the country, the story broke that the admin’s claim from a week before that civilian casualties were down in Baghdad was in fact a lie. The admin had simply chosen to stop counting civilians killed by car bombs and roadside bombs, and instead were only counting those directly shot by opposing factions. In reality the carnage had reached horrifically high levels and showed no sign of easing.

The Democrats launched a move to fire Donald Rumsfeld. The move was doomed to failure, of course. There was no way the Republicans were going to bitch-slap the President like that, two months before an election. But it kept Rumsfeld’s fatuous expression and incompetent policies in the public eye, and that’s just where the Democrats wanted him.

Another major embarrassment to the GOP, Katherine Harris, (aka “Cruella de Vil II”) won her primary despite frantic last minute efforts by her party to get her to lose. She wound up with 49% of the vote, running against three guys nobody had ever heard of. So we get to see a lot of Cruella over the next couple of months, since, like a train wreck or Paris Hilton, you can’t help but start.

In the northeast, the GOP has taken up supporting liberals. In Connecticut, they blew off their own candidate to rally behind Joe Lieberman, despite the fact that Holy Joe is pro-choice, pro-civil rights, anti-gun, for national health care, and even thinks there might be something to this evolution stuff. Similarly, the party is supporting that rarest of creatures, a liberal Republican, in Rhode Island. Senator Chaffee would be likely to win in November and remain a member of the GOP majority. His opponent, a relatively unknown right winger, would be likely to lose to the Democratic challenger who is a moderate. Chaffee is a decent guy. I wouldn’t mind seeing him get reelected.

Afghanistan continued to disintegrate, and as it was announced that NATO was pretty much reduced to holding Kabul and Kandahar – and that only barely – opium harvests hit a new high. So much for the war on drugs. NATO asked for another 2,000 troops.

In the US, the DEA admitted that after a generation of the “war on drugs,” the availability and price of cocaine and heroin were pretty much the same as they were in 1980. Just another glittering right wing accomplishment. Nothing to see here, folks, just move along.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican governor of Kuh-lee-foh-nya, bitch-slapped Putsch twice in one day, signing bills to raise the minimum wage to $8/hour and to reduce CO2 emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Just two little reminders of business George won’t address, is all.

Even as Disney was trying to sell America on the notion that Clinton let Osama bin Laden get away, OBL released an old videotape of him meeting, supposedly, with the men who committed the 9/11 hijackings. Just a little friendly reminder that George let Osama bin Laden get away at Tora Bora, and hasn’t made any serious effort to find him since.

Then the Musharraf regime in Pakistan came right out and said that if they did stumble across OBL, believed to have been in Pakistan since Tora Bora, they wouldn’t arrest him. The following day, under intense pressure from a horrified White House, Pakistan backtracked on that, but the damage was done. The fact of the matter is that Putsch and Musharraf, the two great allies in the war on terror, have no real interest in capturing the man who is supposed to be the mastermind behind the greatest crime committed on US land.

That’s ok. The administration has Mickey Mouse news to tell the public it’s Clinton’s fault anyway. So it’s ok that OBL is still free, and thumbing his nose at the US.

Two weeks after Putsch blurted out at a news conference that Saddam had “nothing” to do with 9/11, the Senate issued a report confirming that, noting that Saddam regarded al Qaida as an enemy. Senator Rockefeller even went so far as to imply that Iraq might be better off had Saddam been left in power. Nothing amazing to most folks, but for the administration it was a betrayal by their rubber-stamp congress.

In the meantime, it’s now official: if you STILL believe Saddam had anything to do with 9/11, you are a certifiable idiot.

The rubber stamp Congress also imploded on the matter of nominating Bolton, Putsch’s disastrous recess appointment as ambassador to the UN. Senator Chaffee (yes, the same one mentioned above) balked, saying he had questions about Bolton’s character, ethics, skills, and ability to work with people. In order to be an American ambassador, even a Republican one, you really should have at least one of those four traits, I would think.

Even the admin’s role as guardian of the memory of 9/11 is slipping. Gallup reported that 36% of Americans think 9/11 was an inside job. David Ray Griffin, emeritus professor of philosophy of religion and theology at Claremont graduate university, who flat out accuses Putsch of masterminding the attacks, is playing to full houses in England. Simultaneously, Steven Jones, the head of the Scholars 9/11 group, got some mainstream publicity when BYU announced they were putting him on paid leave because of his papers claiming that the towers were brought down by controlled implosions installed prior to the plane crashes. (Well, why DID building seven collapse? No plane hit it). The fact is, more and more people have questions about what happened on 9/11, and the often bizarre behavior of the administration since.

Say, maybe Disney could do a miniseries on THAT! Just to keep things fair and balanced, you understand.

The admin had its usual run of scandals, of course, any of which were bigger than the Monica Lewinski thing.

Kellogg, Brown & Root, bastard child of Halliburton, got sued, with the whistle-blower suit alleging they ripped off soldiers again. This one was grubby and sleazy, even by Halliburton standards. A lavish Superbowl dinner meant for the troops got diverted to a big party for KBR employees. And of course the public paid for it. Millions, according to the suit.

The Washington Post, not as subservient as it used to be, printed a leaked memo of a deliberate effort by the GOP to dig up dirt on Democratic candidates and make each race and dirty, personal, and nasty as possible. Nothing unusual there, except that the media is reporting it BEFORE the election for once.

Just to top it off, the head of DataUSA (now Viewpoint USA) got popped for fabricating poll results. She copped a plea to inventing results for a variety of right wing candidates, including Putsch. Again, nothing new – the GOP has been using phony polls for some time. But again, unusual to read about BEFORE an election, when such a story could actually damage the GOP.

And so ends another week in the glorious reign of King George the Third, the Second....