Anthrax Killer Still at Large

Via Jim White at Firedoglake, the FBI apparently still doesn't want to find the Other 2001 Terrorist.

But the news organization that virtually alone sounded the alarm against Smirky/Darth's Iraq lies is still exposing the U.S. government's anti-terror failures.

Greg Gordon at McClatchy Newspapers:

WASHINGTON — Buried in FBI laboratory reports about the anthrax mail attacks that killed five people in 2001 is data suggesting that a chemical may have been added to try to heighten the powder's potency, a move that some experts say exceeded the expertise of the presumed killer.

The lab data, contained in more than 9,000 pages of files that emerged a year after the Justice Department closed its inquiry and condemned the late Army microbiologist Bruce Ivins as the perpetrator, shows unusual levels of silicon and tin in anthrax powder from two of the five letters.

Those elements are found in compounds that could be used to weaponize the anthrax, enabling the lethal spores to float easily so they could be readily inhaled by the intended victims, scientists say.

The existence of the silicon-tin chemical signature offered investigators the possibility of tracing purchases of the more than 100 such chemical products available before the attacks, which might have produced hard evidence against Ivins or led the agency to the real culprit.

But the FBI lab reports released in late February give no hint that bureau agents tried to find the buyers of additives such as tin-catalyzed silicone polymers.

The apparent failure of the FBI to pursue this avenue of investigation raises the ominous possibility that the killer is still on the loose.

No, I don't think the FBI is in cahoots with the anthrax terrorist or any other terrorist. I do think they could not possibly have botched the investigation - leading to the suicide of the presumed suspect - more thoroughly if they tried.

And now they just want to close the book on the whole thing and make sure everybody forgets about it.

Much as I'd like to believe that the FBI is just pretending to have closed the case in order to keep quietly chasing the real Anthrax Terrorist, I seriously doubt that Robert Mueller - the man who ignored multiple warnings about the 9-11 attacks, the man who oversaw the botched anthrax investigation, the man who is not only still FBI Director but whom President Obama just reappointed for another two years - is the man to do that.

No More Labor for Faux Democrats

Yet another reason for liberals and other Real Democrats to stop waiting for Daddy Democrat to rescue us, and get out there organizing house by house, voter by voter in our own neighborhoods.

From TPM:

Watch out, Democrats, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said on Friday. Your buddies in organized labor are looking to expand the friendship circle.

Trumka's speech at the National Press Club, billed as a major address by the union, recast the union's connection to politics as a year-round, national affair -- rather than the election-focused, battleground state strategy of the past. Trumka warned Democrats that labor would not always be at their side, suggesting more of the primary battles like the unsuccessful one that labor backed against former Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) last year.

Trumka's main message to politicians, after a year in which labor has battled broad-based attacks in state legislatures across the country, was a simple one: you're either with us or you're against us.

"It doesn't matter if candidates and parties are controlling the wrecking ball or simply standing aside--the outcome is the same either way," he said in prepared remarks that he veered little from during the address. "If leaders aren't blocking the wrecking ball and advancing working families' interests, working people will not support them."

Trumka's remarks as prepared for delivery here.

Have you talked to your Democratic neighbors today?

Live by Repug Support; Die By Repug Support

Looks like Cowardly Waste of Oxygen Steve Beshear is still following his script for How to Lose Re-election to the Most Hated Man in Kentucky.

From the Herald:

The Democratic re-election campaign of Gov. Steve Beshear rolled out the names of 70 Republicans Friday who endorse him and said more names will be forthcoming.

The move by Beshear came on the eve of Saturday’s Republican unity rally at party headquarters in Frankfort.

Friday’s list of Republicans for Beshear and his running mate, former Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson, included former Lt. Gov. Steve Pence, former Lexington Vice Mayor and restaurateur Michael Scanlon, several mayors and Jon Ackerson, a Louisville Metro Council member and a former state representative and GOP chairman of Jefferson County.

Haha, very funny, how cute. Until you remember that the reason Kentucky Democratic candidates, with their 2-1 registration advantage, keep losing to repugs is that many Kentuckians registered as "Democratic" either vote repug or stay home in disgust at their candidates' blatant public sucking of repug cock.

Repugs, registered and otherwise, always turn out to vote and always vote for the repug candidate, no matter how much they hate him/her. I'm highly skeptical of the predictions that teabaggers will demonstrate their dissatisfaction with Williams/Farmer by either staying home or voting for independent Gatewood Galbraith. That's what Democratic voters do.

Yeah, touting your repug support is sure a great way to get those stay-at-home dems fired up for your campaign, there, guv.

Media Czech has more insight.

"We need to encourage this kind of change all over America"

I'm pretty sure Booker T. Washington High School made the gains it did despite, rather than because of, the destructive No Child's Behind Left Act. But since I've given up on this president making large changes, no matter how necessary, I'll take "reform" if it prevents the rethuglicans from outlawing public education altogether.



Full transcript here.

Dems: Hate Ryan's Medicare Kibble? Social Security Cat Food is Yummy!

Digby nailed it months ago: Congressional and particularly Senate Democrats were going to use the catastrophic Ryan budget bill - especially the kill-Medicare provisions that make voters prefer gay-married illegal messican commie muslin terrists to republican candidates - to make people think the only-slightly-less-catastrophic Simpson-Bowles Catfood Commission plan to kill Social Security is acceptable.

Well, it's happened. But I never thought I would see it where I saw it. I never thought I would see Rachel fucking Maddow - of all the no-bullshit-allowed commentators out there - let a weak sister like Amy Klobuchar get away with claiming what Rachel has got to know is not just not true, not just a lie, but a monstrous conjob being foisted on the American people by this "Democratic" administration.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Part of me wants to think that Klobuchar sneaked the catfood endorsement into what was supposed to be an interview about how the Ryan plan is so radioactive that it is killing GOP candidates everywhere, no matter what the candidate says about it.

But I also want to think that Rachel is way smarter than the DNC bozos writing Klobuchar's script, and she should not have been caught out like that, much less let Klobuchar get away with no pushback.

I never thought Jon Stewart would let John Yoo survive an interview with his limbs intact, either.

Atheist Entrepreneurship + Freakazoid Gullibility Will Save the Economy

After 2,000 years of the freakazoids torturing and burning everybody who looks at them cross-eyed, all's fair in Rapture Economics.

When judgment day comes -- which some US Christian fundamentalists insist will happen on Saturday -- have you thought about what you're going to do with the family dog and cat?

In 26 US states, you could have them rescued and adopted by enterprising atheists who have set up a business to care for the animal companions of any Christians who are selected to go to heaven when Jesus Christ comes back.

"You've committed your life to Jesus. You know you're saved. But when the Rapture comes, what's to become of your loving pets who are left behind?" Eternal Earth-Bound Pets says on its website, offering to "take that burden off your mind."

The post-doomsday pet rescue service already has 259 clients, who have paid $135 for the first pet and $20 for each additional pet at the same address, to ensure the faithful animal companions are looked after and loved even when their Christian owners have gone to the other side.

All the rescuers are sworn atheists, which means they will definitely be left behind on Earth, ready to rescue pets after the Rapture, which one US Christian fundamentalist group has penciled for Saturday.

When judgment day happens, Eternal Earth-Bound Pets co-founder Bart Centre "will notify all of our rescuers to go into action and they will drive to the homes of anyone who's signed a contract with us, pick up their pets and take them home and adopt them as their own, keeping them happy and healthy for the rest of their lives.

"This will happen only if and when the Rapture happens. So we do not expect to have to do anything on Saturday," Centre told AFP.

I'd say it's a shame there's only one chance to profit from this idiocy, since after Saturday the freakazoids will realize ... oh, wait.

There must be infinite ways to keep fleecing this most gullible of all groups. This thing is gonna snowball, people - better get in on it quick.

How the Failure to Expose Arnold's Dick Killed California

I am a long-time advocate of the position that a politician's or elected official's sexual behavior - no matter how unconventional or even despicable - is irrelevant to her job qualifications and performance.

There are, of course, what you might call the side effects of such behavior that do have a bearing on job qualifications/performance.

For example: Presidential Candidate Gary Hart's open dare to Miami Herald reporters in 1988 to follow him around if they thought he was having an affair. He was, of course, boning a local bimbo, they caught him, they published photos, Hart dropped out of the race and was never taken seriously again. Which is a real shame, because it was Senator Hart's special commission from President Clinton in 1998 warning of terrorism threats that presciently had on its cover a bulls-eye over a drawing of - I am not making this up - the Twin Towers.

Now we have a similar situation in California, in which the lack of time to fully expose another candidate's sexual escapades led directly to the economic disaster that is tearing California to shreds.

Kevin Drum explains:

Shortly before California's 2003 special election for governor, the Los Angeles Times reported that a number of women had accused Arnold Schwarzenegger of groping and various other sexual advances. Arnold vaguely fessed up to some bad behavior in the past, but said, "I don't remember things that I've done or said 20 years ago. I don't remember things that I've done 30 years ago." The Times series was widely viewed as a thinly veiled hit piece scheduled to run just days before the election in order to ruin Schwarzenegger's chances.

That was never true. The reason the stories ran so late is because the special election was only six weeks long. If it had been any ordinary election, the Times would have spent far more time on its reporting and the story would likely have broken months before election day. In the event, though, the accusations were out there and the Times did heroic work putting together a hugely complex story under tight deadline pressure. As far as I know, the accuracy of their reporting hasn't been seriously challenged to this day.

And what about Arnold? He insisted that this stuff was so far in the dim past that he could barely remember it. But it wasn't. Today we learn that he had cheated on his wife and had a child out of wedlock just a few years before. His megawatt-smile denials were pure pap, and if knowledge of his affair had been public it's almost a dead certainty that the recall would have failed and Gray Davis would have remained governor. The car tax would have stayed in place, no bonds would have been issued to make up for it, and California's deficit problems would have been less than half as bad as they turned out to be under Schwarzenegger.

That's what comes of running a politically motivated snap election with weird rules in six weeks: you don't really know what you're getting. In the end, the Times was right about Schwarzenegger, and his folksy boys-will-be-boys denials were lies. We've paid a pretty high price for that.

Senate Vote on Goodwin Liu Tomorrow - Send A Message

My Senators are Mitchie-poo McConnell and Aynrand "I've got nothing against ni**ers" Paul, so not even you suffering liberals in Oklahoma - all five of you - can claim to have opinions more irrelevant to the U.S. Senate than I can.

Nevertheless, like an innumerate lottery addict, I can't resist these stupid things. I mean, they've gotta work eventually, right? And it's the lazy man's way to vent.

From NARAL Pro-Choice America:

One of President Obama’s progressive nominees who supports our constitutional right to privacy will face a key vote tomorrow in the U.S. Senate.

We can’t let right-wing politicians block Goodwin Liu from serving as a federal judge.

Tell your senators that you support Goodwin Liu’s nomination.

Goodwin Liu’s nomination has been held up in the Senate by a handful of far-right senators for well over a year.

Liu is a professor at the University of California Berkeley School of Law and an accomplished lawyer with a distinguished record of working to protect civil rights. In his scholarly writings, he has defended the right to privacy and reproductive choice.

He criticized John Roberts’ right-wing record when he was up for the position of chief justice, saying: “What we already know from Roberts' record is cause for concern. His legal career is studded with activities unfriendly to civil rights, abortion rights, and the environment.”

We need more judges like Prof. Liu on the federal bench if we’re going to protect Roe v. Wade and the right to privacy for future generations. Getting him confirmed is going to take everything we’ve got. Call on your senators to confirm Prof. Liu.

Thanks for getting involved today and supporting pro-choice nominees.

Go on. Do it. You know you want to.

Restore the Broken Great Bargain

There have been quite a few books written over the last two years about What. The. Fuck. happened to the economy, and substantially fewer about how to fix it, not to mention how to shove the fix down rethuglican throats.

If you really want to know the details of how Democratic politics and our failure to establish real campaign reform has come just a Paul Ryan away from destroying the nation completely, you can't do better than Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson's Winner-Take-All Politics.

But if you want the short - ahem - version from one of the few people who told Barack Obama to his face the truth two years ago about what would happen if he put Wall Street's concerns ahead of Main Street's, then go out right now and get Robert Reich's latest: Aftershock.

By "aftershock," Reich means the ugly consequences of having used only half-measures to hold the economy just short of total collapse two years ago: high unemployment for years to come, but even worse, jobs that pay far less and offer far less in benefits than even the pathetic "work" we have today, not to mention the superb jobs of the Great Prosperity after World War II.

In just 147 pages, Reich covers what happened and why, but goes beyond that to offer solutions that address not superficial issues like the budget but the fundamental break in the great economic bargain that must be restored before anything else will work.

I have chosen instead to base my argument on two tangible threats that such inequality poses to everyone - including even the wealthiest and most influential among us. One is economic: Unless America's middle class receives a fair share, it cannot consume nearly what the nation is capabile of producing, at least not without going deeply into debt.

SNIP

The other threat is political: Widening inequality coupled with a growing perception that big business and Wall Street are in cahoots with big government for the purpose of making the rich even richer, gives fodder to demogogues on the extreme right and the extreme left.*

SNIP

Unless these trends are reversed, the financially stressed middle class will not have the purchasing power to keep the economy growing. This will hurt even those who are well-off. A political backlash could general a similar result, or worse. Margaret Jones and her Independence Party are ficitions, but the anger on which she bases her appeal is not.

His prescriptions for reversing those trends are not just simple and highly effective, they are all ideas that were mainstream barely 11 years ago. Even among now extinct moderate republicans.

The current self-immolation of the GOP may or may not end in massive victory for Democratic candidates in 2012 - OK, OK, probably won't, given that next year's elections are the Democrats' to lose - but Reich has given us a simple platform on which to start fighting right now:

Restore the Great Bargain.

* Bob: I am myself about as close as anyone gets to a "far left extremist demogogue" these days, but compared to the Reichwingnuts like Paul Ryan and Michelle Bachmann that the Village insists on labelling "centrist," I'm as extremist as Captain Kangaroo.

I remember how you banged your head against the brick wall of Wall Street influence during your stint as labor secretary in the Clinton Administration, Bob, and I know you know the last genuine far left extremist died from assassin's bullets in Louisiana in 1935. So the next time Alfred A. Knopf demands you play false equivalency, tell 'em to fuck off and die. You're a professor at Berkeley, for pity's sake.

The Rich Don't Create Jobs: Never Have, Never Will, Because They Can't

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Not Your Father's G.I. Joe

Should have seen this one coming.

MediaBistro.com reported Friday that the Walt Disney Company has officially trademarked "Seal Team 6," which is the unit designation of the special operatives that waged the assault on the al Qaeda leader's Abbottabad compound.

The trademark applications were submitted just two days after President Barack Obama announced the commando mission that resulted in the death of bin Laden.

Every regime - even the most democratic - needs monsters. Not monsters to fight against, but monsters to fight on our side, against other regimes' monsters. Democratic regimes especially need monsters to do the near-impossible, inhuman work that no one else can.

The key is keeping the number of monsters small, the work they do severely circumscribed and infrequent, and - most crucially - their subordinate position to civilian leadership crystal clear.

Once you let the monsters start setting the rules, you've become them.

We're there.

Jeremy Scahill at The Nation:

The JSOC team that ultimately smoked bin Laden was led by the elite Navy SEAL Team Six. Officially known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or DEVGRU, SEALs from Team Six are considered the most elite warriors in the national security apparatus. Bin Laden is said to have been killed by a “double tap”—two shots to the head, one above the left eye. Soon after, his body was on a helicopter en route to the USS Carl Vinson. DNA tests and photos were taken before bin Laden was dumped into the sea to sleep with the fishes.

Col. W. Patrick Lang, a retired Special Forces officer with extensive operational experience throughout the Muslim world, described JSOC’s forces as “sort of like Murder Incorporated.” He told The Nation, “Their business is killing Al Qaeda personnel. That’s their business. They’re not in the business of converting anybody to our goals or anything like that.” Shortly after the operation was made public, retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey called JSOC’s operators the “most dangerous people on the face of the earth.”

I am one of the people who, nine and a half years ago, blithely recommended that instead of wasting billions invading a country already in the stone age, we just send special ops in to "take out" bin Laden.

Grade-D movie dialogue spoken out of ignorance and fear. But also correct. And dead wrong.

Scahill again:

JSOC—and the Navy SEALs in particular—will become legendary in a much broader circle because of the bin Laden killing, but the secretive unit has had its share of controversy. JSOC forces were responsible for the October 8, 2010, botched rescue that ended up killing British aid worker Linda Norgrove in Afghanistan. JSOC also carried out a raid in Gardez, Afghanistan, in February 2010, during which five people, including two pregnant women and a US-trained Afghan police commander were killed. In that case, senior Afghan security officials and eyewitnesses claimed that US forces dug the bullets out of the women’s bodies. NATO had initially tried to cover up the incident, suggesting it may have been a Taliban “honor killing”; but eventually Admiral McRaven took responsibility for the botched raid and apologized to the family.

The primacy of JSOC within the administration’s foreign policy—from Yemen and Somalia to Afghanistan and Pakistan—indicates that Obama has doubled down on the Bush-era policy of targeted assassination as a staple of US foreign policy.

Read the whole thing.

Hat-tip to loyal reader WG.

Election Day Tomorrow - Do You Know Your Candidates?

Polls are open for primary voting in Kentucky tomorrow - Tuesday, May 17 - from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Here is the Herald's article on where the statewide candidates stand on the issues.

Find out where to vote here.

Yeah, yeah, they're all a bunch of chumps, yadda, yadda. The only bigger chump is you if you don't vote. So get out there and vote.

The Importance of Teaching Poetry

Even if the only poet you've ever read is Joyce Kilmer, you know better than to judge a poem's meaning before the last word.

Unless you're just on Make-Obama-Seem-Like-A-Gangsta autopilot.

A Tone Def Poetry Jam from Jon Stewart:

How Corporate NOLA Murdered Charity Hospital

You remember Charity Hospital, right? The public teaching hospital in New Orleans that survived Katrina thanks to the genuine heroism of employees and volunteers who kept the lights on and the patients alive and cared for.

Charity Hospital is a living, breathing testament to the power of public investment.

Or it would be, if the rethuglican corporatists running the city of New Orleans, the state of Louisiana and Louisiana State University hadn't deliberately killed it in order to get a private boutique clinic for billionaires built with taxpayer dollars instead.

I've been a fan of public teaching hospitals my whole life. Friends, coworkers, family members all work, teach, learn and heal in publicly-supported university teaching hospitals. They are the foundation of any community. You wanna know if a borderline neighborhood is moving up or sliding down? Look for the public hospital. It will tell you everything.

Roberta Brandes Gratz:

Before Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, Charity Hospital was the pride of New Orleans. A 1930s Art Deco–style icon built with WPA funds, Charity was one of the oldest continually operating public hospitals in the country and was regarded as one of the most vital and successful. “Charity was one of the best teaching hospitals in the country, where students from Tulane and LSU did their training,” says Dr. James Moises, a former Charity emergency room physician, noting that it served 100,000 patients a year before the storm.

Today Charity is a skeleton of its former self, with smaller, temporary facilities. The interim coverage does not include “urgent and chronic outpatient care,” notes Moises, and reaches a vastly reduced patient population. Meanwhile, the money that has flowed from the state and federal governments to compensate for the storm’s damage to the hospital is set to be spent on a highly controversial new $1.2 billion complex on an entirely different site, separated from the downtown core by an interstate highway.

The abandonment of the old Charity Hospital stands as a potent symbol of the many disappointments and betrayals experienced by the residents of New Orleans after Katrina. The loss has been a huge blow to the poor African-American community Charity served—an outcome that is all the more tragic, critics say, because it didn’t have to happen.

Charity flooded only in the basement during Katrina. In an extraordinary act of dedication and volunteerism, a 200-person medical and military team brought in a 600-kilowatt generator, pumped out the water and prepared the hospital for service. It was cleaned (to a condition better than before the storm) and was “medical ready” within weeks, according to doctors and military personnel present at the cleanup, as well as Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, the retired Army general who was commander of the joint task force on Katrina.

Read the whole infuriating thing. Print it out and carry it around with you to shove down the throat of the rethuglican moron who starts braying about running government like a business.

Lastest Republican Fad: More Racist Than Thou

Seriously, people: I do not have time to keep throwing yet more evidence of the obvious at you.

Of course Ron Paul is crazy. And of course all republicans are racists. That's not the point. The point is that republicans are no longer denying being racist motherfuckers.

They're not even trying to hide the fact that they are racist motherfuckers.

They are out there, announcing their presidential campaigns, and claiming the right to republican votes because they are the most racist motherfuckers out there.

It's not even real news.

Wanna have some fun? Start a rumor that Newt Gingrich once helped a little old lady across the street.

By tomorrow morning's Sunday shows, Tim Pawlenty will be insisting that he, Tim Pawlenty, grabbed a little old lady off the street, beat her to a pulp and stole her church plate money.

Now that's a real republican.

The Deepwater Horizon Plan for Energy Responsibility

New Rule: Anyone who doesn't understand - or pretends to not understand - that oil is an international commodity independent of its geographical source - is not to be taken seriously on the subject of oil.

And any elected official who so much as implies that "increasing domestic production" of oil has a positive effect on anything except the already obscene profits of Exxon Mobil and the rest of Big Oil is, not to put too fine a point on it, lying.



Full transcript here.

Our Quote for the Battle to Come

"Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die" is already taken, so:

"I believe that as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil. Government belongs wherever evil needs an adversary, and there are people in distress who cannot help themselves."

Yes, I had to look it up. There are too many from this man to choose from, too hard for those of us who remember to contemplate for long, too utterly heartbreaking to imagine what it would be like if we had a leader today who did not just speak this way, but acted this way.

Yes, it's from a campaign book. One written by a first-time candidate for the U.S. Senate.

The Pursuit of Justice, by Robert Francis Kennedy, 1964.

Some People Have to Stuff Their Shorts and Some People Don't

Brutally honest disclosure: I will not consider Barack Hussein Obama a successful president until he institutes single-payer healthcare, gives the National Labor Relations Board more power than Wall Street has, outlaws religious involvement of any kind in politics, mandates Clean Campaigns for all elections, and personally conducts the first nationally legal gay marriage.

You could just say I have low expectations.

Or you could watch Rachel Maddow take all us whiny dirty fucking hippies to the woodshed with this segment from last week:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Full transcript here.

The Lamplighter

I just finished reading the new biography of Justice William Brennan and highly recommend it to everyone discouraged by the apparently unstoppable steamroller of antediluvian political victories by troglodyte rethuglicans.

I was born within a few years of Brennan's elevation to the U.S. Supreme Court, and was raised in an FDR-JFK-RFK-MLK political household. But I never realized until reading Justice Brennan: Liberal Champion just how much my life - the freedoms I enjoy and take for granted - has been shaped by the battles William J. Brennan fought. Not even just the ones he won, but the ones he lost and turned into victories anyway.

When Brennan lay in state after his death in 1997, thousands of people stood in line for hours for the opportunity to pay their respects. One person asked by a reporter why she stood in line replied: "I am a woman. I am black. What more can I say?"

Brennan may well have offered his best insight about how he would like to be remembered before he joined the Supreme Court. It came at the end of his February 1954 Saint Patrick's Day speech in Boston, remembered for its veiled attack on McCarthyism. Brennan recounted a story once told by a nineteenth-century Scottish comedian, Harry Lauder, of sitting at his window before the advent of electricity. Lauder watched as a lamplighter worked his way down the street, climbing his ladder to light each lamp before moving on to the next one. Eventually, the lamplighter was no longer visible, and the storyteller could see only the lamps he had lit. Brennan concluded his speech by saying:

So it is, my friends, with you and me of Irish blood. As we go through life, may we be found lighting the lamps of truth and justice and righteousness, even as our Irish forebears before us, so that as time passes and we move from the scene of action, our own chilren and their children after them, though we be lost to view, may tell the way we went by the lamps we lighted along life's pathway.

Read this book now, and not for the nostalgia high of a time when liberalism marched forward with strength and conviction.

Read this book now for the courage and inspiration we so desperately need today, when liberalism is in retreat from an American fascism that would reject the Birchers as hippies.

Read this book now for a lesson in what it takes to beat back the never-truly-defeated forces of fear and darkness and hate.

And when the next U.S. Supreme Court seat comes open, demand that Barack Obama's appointment at bare minimum be another William J. Brennan.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

I Don't Think That Word "Win" Means What You Think It Means

Six months before the the twin towers fell to suicide plane attacks, Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid wrote a book about the little-known organization behind the worst foreign attack on U.S. soil.

But Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism was important - and remains important more than a decade later - for far more than its insight into how and why the Taliban ran Afghanistan like a medieval video game.

Rashid emphasized over and over again one point. One point that that was deliberately ignored even by intelligence agencies that knew better, even after the 9-11 attacks. One point, that had it been taken seriously, would have saved the U.S. 3,000 civilian lives, more than 5,000 military lives, and trillions of dollars desperately needed today to save the economy.

That point is this:

The enemy is Pakistan.

Not the Taliban, who are a bunch of illiterate troglodytes whose only goal in life is to avoid ever coming into contact with the females of whom they are so terrified.

The enemy is Pakistan.

Not Iran, which despises bin Laden, al Qaeda and Sunni fundamentalism with the heat of a thousand suns, and which would have leaped at the chance to the help the U.S. eliminate bin Laden and all his works.

The enemy is Pakistan.

The staff of U.S. defense intelligence agencies knew it perfectly well. They knew that the hundreds of billions of dollars's worth of high-tech weapons we "sold" to Pakistan ended up in the hands of bin Laden, with the help of the Pakistani security service.

The enemy is Pakistan.

But how boring to take out a bunch of flintstones characters no one would ever know about, when waiting a few months would set off a global conflagration that would never end.

Permanent War at Last.

They must have needed hip waders to get through the flood of masturbatory jizz in Smirky/Darth's Situation Room.

Part One



Part Two