Sunday Morning Musings…

Gut Feeling
Al Qaeda are coming!!!
I was watching Meet The Press this morning – Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was on, pushing the company line for the Bush administration. What a shit-for-brains idiot!

It’s all, al Qaeda, al Qaeda, al Qaeda! The surge is working! We must stand firm! Our national security is at stake. If we leave, al Qaeda will win. Blah, blah, blah. al Qaeda. He must have said “al Qaeda” 10 times in maybe a minute.

It’s like Bush and his cronies figure that if they say the magic words – “al Qaeda” – then everyone will stand at attention and go along with anything they say.

And then if Bush and his buddies really want to get our attention, they’ll invoke the ghosts of “9/11.”


Now this did work for them for quite a long time. It didn’t matter if there was any actual connection or not. So I’m not surprised to see them still trying the same tired ploys, now that things are falling apart for them.
Thankfully, Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) was there to poke holes in Graham’s specious arguments. Webb actually made him look like an ass.

To reiterate, once again: before we invaded Iraq, there was no connection between Iraq and al Qaeda. Saddam Hussein had no connection at all to 9/11 or Osama bin Laden. None. Bin laden and Hussein were enemies.

By taking out Saddam, we made it possible for al Qaeda to become active in Iraq. Better yet, we gave them a cause célèbre. A rallying point.

Every day our troops stay in Iraq drives just that many new recruits into al Qaeda. Muslims have long, long memories. The way they see it, we’re the Christian “Crusaders,” the infidels re-occupying their holy lands.

What would happen if Russia invaded the United States? We’d all unite and try to drive them out!

It’s the exact same thing in Iraq. All the different factions – who otherwise may be mortal enemies – are united in one goal – getting the US the hell out of there.

We have no business being in Iraq. It’s their civil war. The sooner we get out, the sooner all the shooting will stop.

Yes, it’ll probably end up with a Shi’a government with leanings toward Iran. But it’s their country, not ours! We have no business dictating to them.
We must get out of Iraq at once!

George W. Bush: the worst president in history
Washington Post story.

Bush has firmly secured his place in history, as the very worst president ever, behind (in ascending order) Warren G. Harding, James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, and Andrew Johnson (the bottom five).

But then what can you expect?

Look back to early 2001: Here is a man of below-average intelligence, flailing about aimlessly, no direction to his administration, a little over a year into his presidency, and he’s already dying in the polls.

If it hadn’t been for 9/11, George Bush would have been a one-term wonder.

So then 9/11 came down.

Bush’s handlers seized the moment. How do you resuscitate a dying president? Make him a “wartime” commander. A warrior defending our precious freedom! Everyone rallies around a wartime president – as they knew. So all of a sudden, they trotted out a wartime president. And presto chango, we were at “war” with terrorism – which coincidentally is a concept, not a country.

Timing is everything. Bush’s buddies did an excellent job.
Seig Heil, baby!
So we invaded Afghanistan – but they were a little, weak country, and so that didn’t take very long.
If Bush were to remain a “wartime” president, now he needed a new war. Saddam Hussein was a dictator no one really liked – the asshole tried to kill Bush’s mom and dad! Plus he’s got a lot of oil and other stuff we can plunder.

So for Bush to continue to be a wartime president, we now invade Iraq.

The bitch is that lately, people have finally started to notice the humongous failures of the Bush administration: they’ve alienated almost every ally we have and made enemies of the rest of the world (no one likes a bully!); he’s killed off the best and the brightest of our children in his war in Iraq; his administration is riddled with scandals and corruption; he’s flouted the constitution, pushing for an “imperial” presidency that is above any law and is unanswerable to the will of the people; he’s pushed his right-wing Christian religious agenda down the throats of the American public. On and on and on.

He’s flailing around now, aware that if we withdraw the troops from Iraq, all pretense will be gone; his mantle as a wartime president will be gone.
He’s desperate to continue the war at any cost (as long as he doesn’t have to give the soldiers any pay or benefit raises – Story here).

If in September, the report card for his surge is as bad as it looks like it will be – and he still resists bringing our troops home – hopefully the congress will have the balls to impeach him.

Joe Lieberman, Foreign Agent

The more I hear Senator Joe Lieberman (Independent-Israel) spout off about how we must keep our troops in Iraq, it really pisses me off.
Lieberman, as you’ll recall, the former Vice Presidential candidate with Al Gore, had to run for re-election for his Connecticut senate seat as an independent because his views on the war, among other things, were at odds with the Democratic party lines.

What pisses me off is that when Lieberman voices support for continuing the war in Iraq, the constituency he is representing is not Connecticut, but is in reality, Israel. It’s certainly in Israel’s best interests for the US to remain to have a strong presence in the area – it takes pressure off Israel.

But it’s clearly against the interests of all Americans.

There oughta be a “truth in advertising” law for politicians.
I’ve always been a strong supporter of Israel – and always will be. But I think Lieberman ought to register as an agent of a foreign government and quit the pretense that he’s representing Americans.

I also think Lieberman should resign his seat in the senate – or be thrown out. If he wants to work as a lobbyist for Israel, great, but he shouldn’t be doing it as a member of the senate.

I don’t believe it’s appropriate for any foreign government to have a seat in our congress. Great Britain should not have a seat in our congress; Canada should not have a seat in our congress; Russia should not have a seat in our congress; Mexico should not have a seat in our congress; Israel should not have a seat in our congress. No foreign country should.