Author: Zandar1

The notion of the “Long War”, that we would be in the Middle East fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq (and eventually Iran and Pakistan and elsewhere) didn’t go over well with the Preznint’s “focus groups” over the last couple of years.

But several news items here in the dog days (Blue Dog days, maybe) of August have convinced me that the overall Bush plan is now once again to sell the Long War to America…and do it by any means necessary.  The push for the Long War is already underway, and the hard sell begins in September.  The only question in my mind is “How hard will the sell be?”
The war hawks have tipped their hand a number of times in just the last 72 hours about the overall game plan, and the method needed to sell it.

First, we have Gen. Petraeus with the goal:

Gen. David Petraeus told a congressional delegation visiting the Middle East that success in Iraq will require a U.S. military presence there for about a decade, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) said Friday.

The commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, who will deliver a highly anticipated progress report next month, said the U.S. “will be in Iraq in some way for 9 or 10 years,” according to Schakowsky. The general also highlighted progress in Anbar province, where former Sunni insurgents have turned against Al Qaeda extremists in recent months.

Another decade, and that’s just in Iraq.  How can that be possible?  We certainly can’t handle that kind of extended operation, the trillion-dollar mess we’re paying for now is already coming apart.  The answer?  The Long War has to be packaged properly.  First, the really bad news:

WASHINGTON (AP) – Frequent tours for U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have stressed the all-volunteer force and made it worth considering a return to a military draft, President Bush’s new war adviser said Friday.

“I think it makes sense to certainly consider it,” Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute said in an interview with National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.”

“And I can tell you, this has always been an option on the table. But ultimately, this is a policy matter between meeting the demands for the nation’s security by one means or another,” Lute added in his first interview since he was confirmed by the Senate in June.

Doesn’t sound to me like anyone’s making any plans to pull out of Iraq, does it?  The “War Czar’s” first major interview and he’s saying the draft is in play.  The Long War needs troops, because while a decade in Iraq is one thing, it’s not going to stop there:

Behind the scenes, however, the president’s top aides have been engaged in an intensive internal debate over how to respond to Iran’s support for Shiite Muslim groups in Iraq and its nuclear program. Vice President Dick Cheney several weeks ago proposed launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iran run by the Quds force, a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to two U.S. officials who are involved in Iran policy.

The debate has been accompanied by a growing drumbeat of allegations about Iranian meddling in Iraq from U.S. military officers, administration officials and administration allies outside government and in the news media. It isn’t clear whether the media campaign is intended to build support for limited military action against Iran, to pressure the Iranians to curb their support for Shiite groups in Iraq or both.

No, the Long War will expand out from Iraq into Iran.  And we’re going to need those troops a draft would provide.  But that’s political suicide.  There’s no way the Long War can work without support from the home front.  If only there were some way to draw us together as a nation…

In his Thursday column, Philadelphia Daily News scribe Stu Bykofsky seemingly wished for the tragic death of 3000+ Americans when he wrote that “another 9/11 would help America.”

A host of right-wing media outlets provided Bykofsky a national platform yesterday that largely served to give credence to the columnist’s ghoulish suggestion.

But that’s too horrible to consider, right?  Ghoulish, as the guys over at TP suggest.  Not all the wingnuts want to get on board that train:

Not only does Bykofsky have the wrong prescription, he has the wrong diagnosis. The problem isn’t a lack of unity in America; when have we ever been entirely of one mind? Americans thrive on diversity of thought and political opinion, on finding the best way forward by hashing out all of the options. It’s a strength and not a weakness.

The problem that Bykofsky just misses in this piece — and not by much — is the nature of a terrorist conflict. Americans simply haven’t shown the fortitude needed to fight one to the end, at least not since our attention spans shrunk from overexposure to cathode-ray tubes. We fought the Barbary Pirates for decades just after the nation’s birth, and we fought the Native Americans for decades before and after the Civil War (with little honor). Another attack on America would simply repeat the dynamic of 9/11, which would be that we commit to a fight for a couple of years, until everyone started complaining about costs and casualties to the point that Congress started demanding withdrawal.

Ahh, a three-pronged approach then.  Ghoulish bloodletting for some (the ultimate I-told-you-so argument), shame and guilt to try to convince other that the real problem is America’s resolve (you can hear the Cap’n clucking his tongue), and then of course for the rest of us, there’s good ol’ fashioned fear this morning.

NEW YORK (CNN) — New York police officers screened vehicles Saturday near Wall Street with radiation detection devices as “a precautionary measure” after an unconfirmed Web report about a possible radiological attack on U.S. cities.

The report was based on chatter allegedly seen Thursday on al Qaeda Web sites, but the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and New York Police Department insist the threat is unsubstantiated.

To quote Alternet, “The Mix is the Message” here.  It’s not just fear and duct tape this time.  Selling the Long War in 2007 is now a mix of bloody Armageddon fantasy, armchair “24” chickenhawk patriotism lite, concern trolling, and good old fashioned white-knuckle fear.  And that’s just this week’s “Clockwork Oranging”.

Millions of us are out there, asking for the endgame in Iraq.  In reality, we’re being primed for the next game altogether.  All it will take is The Event, the catalyst, the trigger.  The next 9/11 or “unavoidable preemption attack” designed to stop it.

And then the Long War will begin in earnest.  But first, the groundwork continues to be laid.

Yeah, I know.  It’s E.J. Dionne and everything, but as my dad likes to say, “Even a broken Grandfather clock is right twice a day.”

Today he talks about the Great FISA Fold, and for once, he’s right on the money (on the basics, anyway.)  It’s surely worth trying to understand why the FISA fold happened, and Dionne tries to do just that.

Most Democrats opposed the bill, but 41 (including Shuler) voted yes, allowing it to pass. (Murphy remained passionately opposed.) The one Democratic victory: The legislation expires in six months, meaning the debate will resume this fall. But Rep. John F. Tierney (D-Mass.) warned his colleagues that “when you give up your rights under the Constitution, it is not likely you are going to regain them.”

The episode was the culmination of a shameful era in which serious issues related to national security and civil liberties were debated in a climate of fear and intimidation, saturated by political calculation and the quest for short-term electoral advantage.

Dionne, being Dionne, seems to imply that the Democrats alone were responsible for operating solely by the polestar of “political calculation and the quest for short-term electoral advantage.”  Fact is, both sides are, let’s face it.

Every inch of FISA is political.  It was never, ever about protecting America.  One side used it as a cudgel, the other side gave in to fear of political loss.  That’s the long and short of it.

Politically, Republicans won this round in two ways. They got the president the bill he wanted and, as a result, they created absolute fury in the Democratic base. Pelosi has received more than 200,000 e-mails of protest, according to an aide, for letting the bill go forward.

Democrats concede they made an enormous tactical blunder by not dealing with the issue earlier, forcing the question to the fore in the days before the recess. One anxiety hovered over the debate: If a terrorist attack happened and Congress had not given Bush what he wanted, the Democrats would get blamed for a lack of vigilance.

“Could something happen over August?” Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.) asked in an interview. “Sure it could. What bothered me is that too many Democrats allowed that fear to turn into a demand for some atrocious legislation.”

Yeah, see, it wasn’t my fault, it was the other 434 guys.  Oh, and after nearly six years of the President using practically every possible issue as a political cudgel guys, you should learn to anticipate.  Really.  But in the end the fact remains…they folded.  They put political gain in front of standing up for the Constitution.  They’ve done that…how many times now?

The saga also underscored how constrained congressional Democrats feel because of their tenuous majority in the Senate. Had the Senate sent the House an alternative bill, sponsored by Sens. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and John D. Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), the two houses could have put a more limited proposal on the president’s desk and challenged him to veto it. But the Levin-Rockefeller proposal failed.

McConnell, in the meantime, played an ambiguous role. Democrats acknowledge that the intelligence director never explicitly agreed to the House leadership’s proposal. But their fears that McConnell was not calling the shots were stoked when Democratic leaders tried at one point to reach him by phone. An assistant to McConnell let slip that the intelligence director could not pick up because he was on the line with the White House. It was another sign, said a top Democratic aide, that “the White House was driving the train on this.”

Why is a guy with a 29% approval rating driving anything?  Every time the Democrats give in to “centrist bipartisan comity” the Republicans punch the Dems in the nuts.  Every time.  There is no comity, there is no negotiating in good faith, there’s nothing but the GOP trying to control America.  Period.

Sun Tzu once said “If you meet your foe on the field under rules of honor, and your enemy refuses to follow these rules and instead chooses dishonorable tactics with the intention of victory at any cost, then you will be defeated dishonorably.”

Somebody needs to grab the audiobook version of Art of War and start blasting it while the Dems are sleeping, lord knows Rove and Cheney do it.  Hell, Dick probably calls that “Viagra”.

The entire display was disgraceful because an issue of such import should not be debated in a political pressure cooker. It’s not even clear that new legislation was required; Holt, for one, believes many of the problems with handling interceptions involving foreign nationals are administrative in nature and that beefing up and reorganizing the staff around the FISA court might solve the outstanding problems.

But if legislation was needed, there were many ways to grant necessary authority while preserving real oversight. The Democrats got trapped, and they punted. The Republicans have never met a national security issue they’re not willing to politicize. This is no way to run a superpower.

60 Democratic Senators, the White House, and an even larger House majority…that’s the way.  Even better, take the fugging gloves off and make impeachment happen.

Unlike, oh, every one else on earth, Andy McCarthy over at NRO seems to think the problem isn’t the President’s reach on wiretapping powers, but that nasty Judicial branch overstepping its bounds.

In reality, McCarthy’s train of “logic” has only one eventual conclusion:  the President as supreme ruler of America.

The president’s constitutional authority is inviolable — it cannot be reduced by mere legislation. When Congress passes a statute, like FISA, that purports to reduce the president’s constitutional authority, it is Congress, not the president, that is trampling the rule of law. A president who ignores such a statute is not a law-breaker; he is a defender of the highest law. He is executing the responsibility vested in his office by the Framers who, as Alexander Hamilton observed in The Federalist No. 73, worried deeply about “the propensity of the legislative department to intrude upon the rights, and to absorb the powers, of the other departments.”

But let’s leave that aside for a moment. Whether you agree or disagree with what I just argued, it is incontestable that, under our Constitution, the president has a role — a plenary role, according to the Supreme Court — in the gathering of intelligence against foreign entities for national-security purposes.

The courts, to the contrary, have no such role. The Framers did not give them one, and the Supreme Court has acknowledged that they are institutionally incompetent to be brought into the intelligence-gathering equation, much less to manage it.

It is thus not the Constitution that has inserted judges into the intelligence-gathering business. If the Constitution were being honored, they’d be out of it. They are in the equation for one reason and one reason alone: Congress unwisely (and, I believe, unconstitutionally) interposed them when it enacted FISA.

Say what?  Now, I’m not Glenn Greenwald or anything, but it seems to me that taking a strict Constitutional view, a lot of the Bush administration wouldn’t even exist in the first place, you know?  Certainly we’d have no Executive branch efforts to end habeas corpus, and of course we wouldn’t have all this silly unconstitutional stuff about the President detaining people with no right to trial.  Most importantly, we wouldn’t have FISA in the first place, because it would be illegal search and seizure.  We would of had the President declare war, officially, on Iraq, or else we’d not have anyone in the country doing anything.

But note what he says at the beginning: “the President’s Constitutional authority is inviolable“…even presumably compared to the Constitutional authority of the other branches of government.  Stop and think about that. Inviolable.

That’s the problem with McCarthy declaring FISA is itself illegal because of strict constructionist standards…it would render, oh, say 95% of what Bush has done as illegal and moot.  Signing statements would certainly disappear.  Congress would be holding all the purse strings, so I’m wondering where all those executive branch offices would go.  Dick Cheney would be relegated to opening Wal-Marts in Moldavia.  Logic would seem to dictate that.

When you use the Constitution as the ultimate standard, you don’t get to apply it selectively…it’s the freakin’ Constitution.  But McCarthy’s not done.  Most people would have probably stopped after the 2×4 hit them in the back of the head.  Not Andy.

So, what caused our present national-security crisis? A judge on the FISA court outrageously ignored the FISA statute. And it’s not the first time. And, whenever it happens, the purpose is to vest our enemies with more “rights,” not to protect our nation from those trying to slaughter us.

Understand this point. It’s crucial. The president has a right to ignore the FISA statute if it conflicts with the higher duties that are assigned to him by the Constitution. The president has an obligation to safeguard the American people against foreign attack — including strikes ordered by al Qaeda supervisors overseas, who give direction to terrorists embedded here, as they did in the run-up to 9/11. You can argue that he has overstepped his authority. You cannot credibly argue that he is without a colorable basis for doing so.

Well then, doesn’t that apply to Congress and the judicial branch as well?  Shouldn’t they be able to ignore a Presidential veto if the legislation they are passing involves, say, the higher Constitutional duties of Congress, raising money  and providing for the military?  Isn’t that a plenary power of Congress?  Not that Congress should do that, but the branches are co-equal, you know.

When you start openly talking about one branch having the right to ignore checks and balances from another branch, then you start getting into very dangerous territory.  It’s even worse when you subscribe to the John Yoo Theory Of Selective Constitutional Law, where the only branch that can do this is the Executive, and the Executive can basically ignore the other two branches because it “interferes with plenary higher duties”.

That’s how you start arriving at fascism, dictatorships, and Maximum Leaders for Life.  McCarthy is basically espousing a dictatorship, while saying the Founding Fathers would approve, then he says that it’s Congress’s fault for letting the Judicial get away with abuses of power, and then for the four-hit wankmaster combo he then scolds the Left for not calling out the “activist FISA judges”.

That’s beyond self-serving rhetoric, it’s pure insanity.  Any restraint on absolute Presidential power is illegal, because it interferes with the “higher Constitutional duties” of the President.  Under that logic, there should be no oversight, no way to redress grievances, and no limit on the President whatsoever.

In fact, why should the President even pay any attention to the Supreme Court or Congress at all?  Any law or precedent handed down by the other two branches of government could conceivably “interfere with the President’s higher Constitutional powers”.

But the point where McCarthy goes completely off the rails is where the President’s “plenary” powers are checked by the Constitution itself.  McCarthy’s argument is that the Constitution gives the President the power to ignore anything including the parts of the Constitution that he doesn’t like.

When the rules are interpreted to give all the power to one entity, including the power to change the rules or ignore them completely, that entity has absolute power.  The logical endpoint of the argument is that there’s basically nothing stopping the President from dissolving Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution itself, and declaring himself the ultimate arbiter of all things American.

There is no other way to look at McCarthy’s article but to say he believes the President of the United States is the supreme ruler of the country.  And logic like this is a far greater threat to America than anything Osama or Saddam or Ahmadinejad could ever imagine doing to us.

I’ve finally decided that the most effective purveyor of terrorism in the US is in fact, the Bush Administration.

When you threaten a government entity with the sole purpose of causing enough fear to change existing government policy, that’s terrorism.

Bush did that this weekend with FISA.  Even worse, now that he knows he has gotten away with it, he wants more authority.

“While I appreciate the leadership it took to pass this bill, we must remember that our work is not done,” the President said in his Sunday statement. “This bill is a temporary, narrowly focused statute to deal with the most immediate shortcomings in the law.”

The President said next month he would focus on further immunizing private companies that cooperate with government wiretapping. However, he used complicated language to describe these activities.

“When Congress returns in September the Intelligence committees and leaders in both parties will need to complete work on the comprehensive reforms requested by Director McConnell, including the important issue of providing meaningful liability protection to those who are alleged to have assisted our Nation following the attacks of September 11, 2001,” he said.

Greeeeeeat.  And of course, the White House spin today is nothing short of incredible

Yesterday, President Bush signed into law an expansion of his domestic spying powers, legislation that the Washington Post called “as reckless as it was unnecessary.” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino appeared on Fox and Friends this morning to defend the new law, saying it was the “bare minimum of what Mike McConnell, the DNI, said he needed.”

She added, “And I see today that some people are saying that this is a wild expansion of powers for the president. That could not be further from the truth. Only in a Democratic spin room could they come up with expansion of powers when you have to — when what we actually did was return the law to its original intent.”

Yes, because the original intent of FISA was to be more of a general guideline for wiretapping anyone the President wants to with no oversight.

Just like the original intent of the Constitution was more of a set of suggestions for how we could have a monarchy with the trappings of a republic.  It’s just a piece of goddamn paper, you see.

So when you fold your hand like this, then people start calling your bluff.

PERINO: Well, I think it’s because people finally understood that the director of national intelligence was extremely serious when he said, I have to have this.

Now, remember, this is a bare minimum of what Mike McConnell, the DNI, said he needed. And it was a real fight with the Democrats to get them to pull it across the line. We did have some help from some senators, like Senator Mikulski and Senator Feinstein to help pull this across the line, but it was down to the wire. And the work isn’t done yet. One of the things the president said yesterday is, When you come back in September, we’ve got more work to do. This law needs to be further modernized and we need to provide liability protection for companies who are alleged to have helped the United States after the 9/11 attacks.

Turns out the Dems didn’t give the President everything he wanted, only what he though he could reasonably get away with.  NOW the President is expecting the Dems to give him everything he wanted as soon as they come back from vacation, which is to get the telcos off the hook for illegally wiretapping Americans.  Of course this is a tacit admission that, well, the telcos were fucking illegally wiretapping Americans, and that Bush was illegally directing the telcos to illegally wiretap Americans.  But that doesn’t matter, because in order to safeguard America from Raghead Sunzabitches(tm) we have to…immunize AT&T from lawsuits.  Yeah, that’ll show Osama.

And as an extra added bonus, we get to listen to a month of the Noise Machine proclaiming how if AT&T isn’t retroactively immunized from breaking the law, that America will get overrun by terrorist ninjas riding velociraptors with suicide vests.

That’s it.  At this point there is no opposition party, there is only the Subtle Gradations Of Encroaching Fascism Party.  There is no Fourth Amendment.  The Bush plan is clear:

1. Terrah Attack!  Blame the Democrats for not funding DARPA giant robots project that could have saved us all.
2. Nuke Iran while blaming the Democrats for lack of giant robots to fight in Iran.
3. Declare martial law, suspend elections and all other rights, blaming the Democrats for trying to stand up for civil liberties for giant robots, which led to 1).
4. Re-institute the draft, blaming the Democrats for continuing lack of giant robots to fight for us in Iran.
5. Demand Congress pass Giant Robot bill.
6. Laugh like Wallace Shawn in the Princess Bride.

Jesus, how did we let this happen?  We’re in the soft dictatorship, and now the only question is how long before the “soft” gets dropped.

I’m not sure if it’s being a Devil’s Advocate or if I’ve just got too much Reynolds Wrap on the noggin this week, but Natasha’s article on peak oil and a review of A Crude Awakening over at Crooks and Liars got me thinking last night.

Does “Peak Oil Theory” explain the Bush Administration’s position on Iraq?
Really, think about it.

You’re Dubya.  It’s 2001, and you’re an oil man.  Your friends are oil men from an oil state.  Your Veep is an oil man.  You’re pretty sure oil is damned important.

Dick and his energy company buddies sit you down and explain Peak Oil to you.  They explain that without cheap oil, America is fucked.  The solution, Dick says, is to control the oil.  Whoever does, wins.  There’s gonna be wars over this stuff.  Big, nasty wars.  We’re going to need to go into places that have oil and set up bases and defend this stuff, or America is going to go belly up.

And, Dick says, if you don’t do this now, they are going to blame you when the crash comes, because you didn’t do it.  You’re going to be the President that lost America.  Food riots.  Millions dying.  The end times are a-comin’ and all that, Georgey.  This is it.  This is the 21st century.  One big oil war.

So Dubya goes along with the plan to hit Iraq and turn it into our base camp.  9/11 happens, and Dick says Hey man, suddenly we have 85-90% of America behind you and we can invade the country and kill the guy who went after your dad and you’ll save the country, George.  You’ll be a goddamn American War President.  

Well, Dubya’s the Decider.  He’s a big picture man.  He’ll save America, dammit.  So we go to war in Iraq.  We say it’s one thing, but we mean another.  Just have to catapult the propaganda.  Just have to fight the War on Terrah.  Cause when the real shit hits the fan, and a tank of gas is half a week’s pay, and groceries is the other half, and they will come for you, man.  But if we control the oil and we get the sweetheart deals, then it won’t happen.  Oil will remain cheap, but not TOO cheap.  And it’ll buy America another couple of decades to find a more permanent solution.

Everybody else?  They’ll have to pay up.  But we’ll be okay.  The oil companies will play along because they’ll make record profits.  The Saudis will play along, and so will the rest of the Middle East, because they need the money too.  Iraq’ll be a cakewalk, you see George.  This is a great plan.  Glad you thought of it.  Win-Win for America and the world, really.  It’ll weaken the Chinese and keep Russia in its place, and Europe will come to us as friends.

And somehow, I can see the light bulb go off over Dubya’s head as he realizes that “future historians will praise him as a visionary President” and all that, and he turns to Dick and says “Hell yeah, let’s do it.  Let’s save ‘murrica.”

Now…maybe I’m reading way, way, way too much into this.  Occam’s Razor strongly supports simple greed and power lust, if not good ol’ fundie Armageddonism.

But Peak Oil does, at least partially I think, explain why we’re in Iraq, and we’ll never leave…and why nobody will admit why we’re really there.

Not just the oil, but control of oil and its price.  And of course, that kind of power grab makes the rest of it:  the civil liberties violations, the rape of the Constitution, the naked soft dictatorship, the persecution of dissent…it makes all of it that much easier, because it’s being done by people who believe they are doing it for true patriotism.

It’ll be necessary to control the riots, Dick says.  You need the ability to respond quickly if things get out of hand.  You gotta get out ahead of this.  We’ll handle the heavy work, we just need your okay, Mr. President.

And so…yeah.  Maybe I’m just terribly cynical like Steven D says, but…I think there’s merit in thinking Peak Oil is part…maybe a very large part…of why we’re in Iraq today.

It doesn’t justify a single drop of blood, of course.  But the underlying logic, such as it is, does seem to hold.

David Ignatius gets into some major league magical wankery (Houdini, not Potter) with his column in Sunday’s WaPo on that favorite GOP talking point, “We Can’t Leave Iraq Or Millions Will Die Instantly”…but the real magic act is how Captain Ed uses the WaPo article to make Bush’s guilt vanish.

Try to imagine what was running through the mind of Hassan Kazemi Qomi, Iran’s ambassador to Baghdad, as he sat across the negotiating table from his American counterpart, Ryan Crocker, last week. While the U.S. diplomat delivered his stern warning against Iranian meddling in Iraq, Qomi must have wondered: Why should I listen to this guy? Congress is going to start pulling U.S. troops out soon, no matter what he says.

That’s the difficulty for Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus as they try to manage a stable transition in Iraq while Congress chants ever more loudly: “Troops out! Troops out!” It’s hard for anyone to take American power seriously when prominent members of Congress are declaring the war already lost.

“Congress is hurting the troops.  Dissent hurts the troops.  And by Congress, I mean those Unserious Democrats(tm).  The fact we fucked up this war from the beginning means nothing, because I’m going to blame this all on Harry and Nancy when September comes around.”

This is a moment when America would be better served by a parliamentary system. The Bush administration would have lost a vote of “no confidence” after November’s congressional elections, and the Democrats would now have responsibility for overseeing the tricky process of extracting American forces from Iraq without doing even more damage. Iraq would be the country’s war again, rather than George Bush’s.

“And by the country’s war, I mean the Democrats’ War.  God, how did we let the Democrats get us into this mess anyway?”

And while that’s some heavy wankage there, Ignatius needs to go across the street and watch “Captain Ed” Morrissey perform some real legerdemain and prestidigitation upon the world, then like The Prestige, try to figure out how it was done.  Here’s the Captain’s Sunday matinée performance as he saws Ignatius in half…

“David Ignatius makes a few mistakes in his column today on the history of American warfare, but he gets his overall point correct. The loud and strident calls for an American withdrawal from Iraq continue to undermine our ability to limit the damage resulting from that retreat when it happens. In fact, the critics have made it much more likely that a full-blown, genocidal civil war will erupt in its wake…”

The first part of the act, or “wankery”, is called The Pledge.  Here, the wanker shows you an ordinary GOP talking point that’s been discredited logically by multiple people.  He asks you to inspect it to make sure it’s not a secret George Soros press release.

“It’s a real conundrum, because the reductio ad absurdum argument that dissent hurts America should be rejected by everyone who believes in democracy and free speech. Even the somewhat less reduced argument that dissent during wartime should be actively discouraged is objectionable on the same grounds; are we to assume that every war in which we engage will be a good idea? And how would we push back against those wars if we demand no criticism during wartime?”

The second part of the wankery is called The Turn.  Here, the wanker takes the ordinary bullshit talking point and turns it into something extraordinary…in this case actual fucking logic.  Now you’re looking for the secret…how did he do that?  What’s the catch?

“Yet we cannot shade our eyes and pretend that this strident and hysterical debate has not had an effect on our ability to prevail in Iraq and to shape the outcome through negotiations. In a conference call with the commander in Ninewah on Friday, we heard that the calls from Congress for immediate withdrawal has “absolutely” damaged the Army’s HUMINT efforts and made the populace more fearful of abandonment by the US to the Shi’ite militias and the terrorists. Frightened populations look for those who will protect them — and Arab cultures in particular are known for this, which is why they produce so many strongmen and no democrats.

The protests of MoveOn, International ANSWER, and Code Pink make little difference to the Iraqis in the street. It’s the irresponsible rhetoric coming from Congress that creates the problems in American credibility in Iraq, and it’s pushing the Iraqis away from the central government that we helped nurture into existence. Congressional leaders need to act more responsibly and stop pandering to the excesses of these fringe protest groups.”

You don’t really want to know the truth that this pesky logic presents. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn’t clap yet.

“America can prevail in Iraq, if we stop trying to rush to declare defeat, as Harry Reid did. Despite the asinine idea that by losing 3500 troops in four years of war amounts to the worst defeat in American history, we actually have done a good job with the limited deployment we have in both keeping a real civil war from breaking out and winning a hearts-and-minds battle, especially since the beginning of this year. We’re only losing it because the American public has decided we’re losing it, and it’s killing our credibility.”

Because making bullshit talking points disappear in a puff of logic isn’t enough, you have to bring it back as something far more insidious…that’s why there’s the third and hardest part of the wankery: The Prestige.

Truly a master in action, folks.  But of course the fair Captain opened his act a bit early, and we can all easily see now what the trick is meant to do: Set the Democrats up for Petraeus’ September report.  Timing is everything in hocus-pocus like this.  The Bushies are planning to hang the previous four plus years of failure on the Dems, and the Serious Right Wing Bloggers(tm) are the ones being put on stage as the new blood of stage magicians making any fault of Bush disappear.

The key to any great magic act is misdirection and doubt, and the next six weeks is going to be one long opening act to one hell of a magic trick:  trying to make any guilt or responsibility BushCo has for the deaths in Iraq and the condition of the Middle East vanish like Copperfield did to the Statue of Liberty.

Our job is to make sure that guilt reappears by hitting them with the fucking truth.