Frank Rich (behind the firewall):
We know what Mr. Bush wants to distract us from this time: Congressional votes against his war policy, the Libby trial, the Pentagon inspector general’s report deploring Douglas Feith’s fictional prewar intelligence, and the new and dire National Intelligence Estimate saying that America is sending troops into the cross-fire of a multifaceted sectarian cataclysm. That same intelligence estimate also says that Iran is “not likely to be a major driver of violence” in Iraq, but no matter. If the president can now whip up a Feith-style smoke screen of innuendo to imply that Iran is the root of all our woes in the war — and give “the enemy” a single recognizable face (Ahmadinejad as the new Saddam) — then, ipso facto, he is not guilty of sending troops into the middle of a shadowy Sunni-Shiite bloodbath after all.
Except, of course, that none of this makes an iota of a difference. We are being governed by madmen. They are madmen that actually seem to have a thirst for blood. Or, if we want to be generous, we can say that they have an inhuman lack of aversion to blood. They make a virtue out of a tolerance for bloodshed. Especially a tolerance for the blood of our young men and women. Again and again they tell us that the very act of blood sacrifice is what is required to appease an angry al-Qaeda. We must pour the blood of our young out on the sands of Iraq like a libation or Usama bin-Laden will not be appeased and will not be deterred. At this point it is nothing less than absurd.
“I think if we were to do what Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha are suggesting, all we’ll do is validate the al Qaeda strategy. The al Qaeda strategy is to break the will of the American people, knowing they can’t win in a stand-up fight, try to convince us to throw in the towel and come home and then they win because we quit,” -Dick Cheney February 20, 2007, Japan.
These are not the words of a man. These are the words of a vampire.
Or simply the words of a corporate tool.
Lose control of the Middle East, lose control of the oil.
Lose control of the Middle East…admit that the U.S. can be defeated…and lose control of the resources of much of the rest of the Third World.
Lose the ability to prosecute the ongoing strategy of economic imperialism…lose the ability to dominate the U.S. corporate and consumer world.
Lose that…and at BEST they lose their exalted positions as the bosses of all bosses.
At worst (for them, anyway)…War Crimes Tribunals for the pols, criminal fraud trials for the hustlers.
Although of course…
“Vampire” is as good a term as any.
AG
i think there will come a time when the velvet glove of lying hypocrisy will come off, and pox neoconniana will be revealed in all its brutal illogic.
don’t like it?
wham…
all this militarisation, and turning the ‘homeland’ into a police state to be ‘safer from the terra-ists’ will finally dispense with the honeyed words and appeals to humanistic ideologies, such as ‘democracy'<sup>TM</sup>, ‘freedom<sup>TM</sup>’, etc etc.
he with the bigger club makes the rules..
he wants your oil, your women, your water, give it all up, and if he’s feeling mellow, he’ll let you keep your miserable life as slave-
what’s going to be interesting is to see how the rest of the world finds a workaround.
i know it’s horrible, but the windup is almost worse.
bloodsuckers, indeed.
(painting by alex ross)
yes. yes they certainly fucking are. the words of an actual man. a human being. human words like those spoken many times before. words that promote actions that cause misery and death for other actual people.
monsterous ideas, but not a monster. another person with no regard for other people.
too bad.
hey S2, long time no see.
It’s all semantics. Calling people monsters is appropriate in certain circumstances.
Hmmmmm….
AG
sure.
It’s called an exorcism.
That’s DE-demonizing.
AG
of course; I agree.
I guess what I was getting at is that those most totalitarians also use this same device to exploit and perpetuate the fact that there are actually a lot of people who see other humans as not-human, be they dictators or muslims or lesbians or jews.
and defining the enemy as non-human works wonders in enabling fascists.
(I am not suggesting, commenting, hinting at, subtley maintaining or otherwise portraying you as a totalitarian.)
that’s cool. I’ve been called a lot of thing recently and totalitarian would be like a bing cherry on top.
I know what you’re saying, but my point is that these people are not normal, they’re more like Ted Bundy.
true. definitely not normal. like john wayne gacy, only with real-time war porn, not clown paintings.
I got what you were saying all along: you just struck a sore point regarding language. its my bad. I live for the day we can afford to talk about nuance and semantics.
and I’m sorry people gave you a sundae but left the cherry off the top.
best regards.
In my discussions with aware friends these last few weeks, the subject keeps coming up “why hasn’t someone killed Cheney yet?” I can only answer that we are peacemakers, not murderers. Too bad.
Impeachment would be nice, but that would mean Dick and George would still be alive.
So, I use visualization. I visualize Cheney stressed and angry to the max, BP 18/120, I see a ripping aneurism in his aorta, and I see a chest full of Borg-fluid and a dead Cheney-bot on the floor of the White House.
Pray it be true!! Pray!
That man-borg has his finger on the nuclear trigger!!!
“Vampire” is just being kind, because after all, we are peacemakers.
Grrrrr . . . . . .
And how many times does it have to be repeated, Our primary adversary in Iraq is not al Qeada, it is an overwhelmingly Iraqi-led insurgency.
And show me where Nancy Pelosi or John Murtha have said, in actual words, we should just “throw in the towel against al Qaeda and quit”. You can’t because that statement is a lie.
And will we see any of these falsehoods perpetuated by our Vice President and others, be identified as such by any mainstream media outlets? Well, I think we know the answer to that one.
The American people just cannot get their arms around the fact or find it conceiveable to accept that our elected leaders actually want war. A thought like that is discounted by most Americans as wild, left-wing, Bush hating rancor.
But when you read their statements as a whole and look at their actions what other conclusion can be reached? They have no use for anything else except as a prop or smokescreen.
Obviously, BooMan, when talking with most “people on the street” and starting the conversation calling Bush and Cheney “madmen” and “vampires”, that would pretty much derail the conversation right there. But your point has to be taken seriously by anyone who takes an objective view of what has happened under this administration. But what kind of people do the things they have done and not have an almost delusional mindset?
It has gotten so insane that any day I expect to open the newspaper and see the headline “President Releases Signing Statement Decreeing All Virgins Be Tossed Into Volcanoes”.
“But MikeInOhio, surely you jest?”
Okay, maybe. But only a little. That is what is scary.