Onward Christian soldiers

Just when you think that what you know about the George W. Bush administration's depravity, rank hypocracy and sadististic bullying masquerading as patriotic piety has hit the bottom of the barrel, someone comes along and points out that there is a whole other barrel underneath this one. Apparently Donald Rumsfeld, not content to have things like prayer meetings going on at the Pentagon and a chief of Special Forces who make Gen. Jack T. Ripper look like the moderate wing of the GOP/military axis, took it upon himself to make special title pages for the regular top secret briefing he delivered to the president and handful of others. Pages with heroic, glamorous images of America's Heroic Glamorous Defenders of Heroic Freedom Heroically Defending Freedom in Glamorous ways, overlaid with stirring passages from, yep - you guessed it - the Bible. (image lifted shamelessly from Jesus' General )

See them all here

Keep in mind that this was not an attempt to play to the religious rubes out there in the hinterlands or a pose adopted to curry favor with the evangelistic electorate. These covers were for super-secret executive level only reports that were circulated only to the most senior people.
One wonders what the "Prince of Peace" would make of that. One also wonders why none of these pictures were included with suitable biblical quotes:

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth

Whatever you do to the least of my brothers, you do to me.

Suffer the little children to come unto me

If you are American, write your president, your congressman, your senator, your newspaper and demand that the people responsible for starting this hideous human meatgrinder on false pretenses for their own selfish reasons be brought to trial.

Gratitude to fellow Fez enthusiast Atta J. Turk

ending torture

Say what you want about Obama and his insistence on protecting the bankers and the wealthy and his refusal so far to prosecute his vicious, corrupt and venal predecessors -- if he does nothing else for the next eight years this is a significant accomplishment in cleaning up the mess left behind by the previous neofacist administration. This is the next step.

So long, and thanks for all the bullshit

The Wall Street Journal editorial on the legacy of Dubya reminds me of the Douglas Adam's observation in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

“Man has always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much...the wheel, New York, wars and so on...while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man...for precisely the same reason.”

The piece lauds Bush for all same things that about 75 percent of the electorate criticism him for; the war in Iraq, the establishment of the national security torture state apparatus, the erosion of the public school system, the baby steps toward banning abortion, the administration's response to the financial catastrophe. It stops short of congratulating him for drowing all those annoying poor people in New Orleans, but maybe that is just part of his "record of unparalleled success that will be increasingly appreciated in the years to come."

Given that the author of this hagiography is none other than Marc Thiessen, Dubya's own speechwriter and former apologist for Jesse Helms, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. But most newspapers didn't ask Joesph Goebbles to write Hitler's obituary in 1945 or G. Gordon Liddy to reflect on the legacy of Nixon on the day he slunk from office.

Appalled yes, surprised no

"Truth is that the people of the administration are guided by no particular agenda other than the continued expansion of their own power for the sake of owning power. There's no fundamental reason for governing. They're not trying to accomplish anything"

--David Kuo

   former special assistant to President George W. Bush

Truth & Consequences

As Dubya slithers from the White House, one vital question remains: Will there be any consequences for him or any of his evil, incompetent cabal of ignorant, blood-fattened henchmen?

The soon-to-be ex-president has asked for some television time to give a farewell address Thursday in which he will do his best to find a silver lining to the hurricane of the last eight years and try to burnish his legacy, using the blood and tears of Iraqi children and American soldiers to polish the turd that has been his presidency. "I've kept you safe" he'll bleat "I've fought the terra!" ignoring the fact that if he'd paid attention his national security briefings in 2001 he might well have really kept America safe and that for the last seven years he's been unable or unwilling to find a six-foot-seven dialysis patient in an area not much bigger than Rhode Island.

Thursday's speech will be all about trying to salvage some sort of credit, and I'm not really interested in listening to that crap. No, what I'm waiting for is the announcement to the press on Sunday or Monday about the pardons. Bush supposedly is generally loathe to pardon people, but I'll give you 10 to 1 that there are blanket, pre-emptive pardons handed out for misdeeds that "may or may not" have been committed in the service of the Bush administration. The only question is who gets one and who doesn't.

As has been pointed out in many places this week, the few decent, competent career civil servants who have survived the last eight years of relentless dimwittery and hyperpoliticization are bound to have amassed container-loads of smoking gun memos documenting the both the petty douchebaggery and massive criminality of the likes of Alberto Gonzales, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney, Monica Goodling, John Yoo, Douglas Feith, Michael Brown ----oh, the list goes on and on and on. Can Bush afford to leave his people exposed to the possible rigors of justice? Is he confident they won't turn on him? How low on the totem pole will the whitewash brush be applied? Will he pardon the torturers or just their bosses? Or will he throw his underlings to the wolves and scurry off into the sunset with just his inner circle granted immunity?

And if he has the hubris to declare that neither he nor his minions have done anything wrong, will Barack Obama do anything about it?

George W. Bush looks into the sole of Iraq

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/28223089#28223089

"This is your farewell kiss, you dog!" shouted Muntadar al-Zeidi, a correspondent for Al-Baghdadia television, an Iraqi-owned Cairo-based TV station. "This is from the widows, the orphans and those were killed in Iraq."

Many will decry this lack of respect for the office of the presidency or the lack of professionalism on the part of the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at the man who invaded and destroyed a country for no good reason except that he could. Those people are wrong. Bush has already so defiled the office the presidency that it can't really sink much lower and sometimes even the most professional and objective observer must put their humanity ahead of their professional ethics. I'm sure al-Zeidi is now a national hero in Iraq and I'm almost equally sure he won't see the light of day or his family anytime soon.

Frankly, I think Bush is lucky it wasn't a grenade, or at least a bottle or brick. To be honest I'd like to see Bush pelted with shoes everywhere he goes for the next decade. I'd like to see about 4,200 pair of empty combat boots dumped on the White House lawn. I think people from around the world should mail him their oldest, smelliest, most dogshit-encrusted sneakers both en masse and for the rest of his miserable life so that he never, ever forgets.

Update: While Dubya doesn't understand "what his beef was" and doesn't think the sentiments he expressed so forcefully are representative of Iraqi society as a whole, al-Zeidi has become a folk hero overnight across the Middle East. It turns out his experience and outlook are not so different from the average Iraqi. He hates the United States and Iran, and not without very good reasons.

The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin has a good roundup of the coverage.