Now that the "Report" has basically asked to find out if the light at the end of the tunnel is daylight or an on-coming train, I wonder how Holy Joe is feeling. Can't be too good... it looks like everyone but St. John is deserting him either out of principle, political calculation (Iraq is becoming the new Third Rail of politics) or retirement from public life.

If Holy Joe is on a talkshow for 15 minutes on a Sunday, and we call that a Lieberunit: 1 Lieberunit = .25 hours, how many Lieberunits until he repudiates his position and does a Rummy..."I was against the war before I was, you know, for it"..?

The Baker-Hamilton report aka "Cover my Ass with 168 pieces of Grade-A gov't certified paper" has an interesting cast of characters as authors doesn't it? Russ Feingold on Olbermann tonight made a really excellent point, that this report is totally "inside baseball" for the 1600 Crew because not a single member of the commission was ever opposed to the war in Iraq at any time. It is a report of "True Believers" assuaging their consciences over doing the wrong thing.

I also have to wonder how painful (if at all) this must have been for Sandra Day O'Connor. Had she voted to support the law in 2000*, there would have been no Iraqi War, there would have been no 2,800-plus American servicemen and women and countless Iraqis dead, our debt for this war would not be pushed into generations unseeable. No, Ms O'Connor put party and politics before country. I wonder how she felt getting figuratively slapped in the face every day she had to see what she wrought by selecting her man for her party as she sat on the commission and heard testimony and read the classified reports of how fucked up her boy has made this mess.

Too bad, Ms O'Connor, I hope it brings the consequences of your decision home in a way that nothing else would have. The blood of many is on your hands for your allegiance to party not principle and the rule of law.

***Update and correction
Why I need an editor -- observant and wise reader Marcel caught an error in this post that I missed. I had put 1999 instead of 2000 for the Bush v Gore court case without realizing it. Thanks Marcel. You rock!

Once upon a time, I used to actually respect Michael Kinsley in that weird sort of "hey, he's a likeable nerd" kind of way. But he seems to have drifted, like many pundits do, into trying to maintain his Kewl Kidz Klubkard by writing sophomoric crap like Broder and Will. I guess it's all part of "paying your Kewl Kidz Duez".

He manages to continue the "Webb was mean to Bunnypants" line in todays post:

Webb seems to believe that because he served in Vietnam, anyone who could have but didn't should shut up. That includes people who opposed that war -- that is, who got it right -- as well as those who supported it. ... Webb avoided the receiving line and then, when Bush came up and asked him how his son was doing, he basically told the president to flake off. Webb's self-righteousness can be obnoxious. ...

I guess he missed the backstory from Jim Moran of Virginia that Beloved Leaders handlers told the Deciderer to tread carefully around Webb in discussing his son. Said son having just been up-close-and-personal to an IED that killed three of his buddies. He also misses the fact that Webb was responding to Bunnypants being an asshole with his "that's not what I asked you" comment, so Mikey, do we all now kiss the ring of the the Royal Idiot?

Kinsley has fallen a long way over the years in his quest to be a Kewl Kid. This is just more evidence of decline. I wonder when we are going to get the Concern Troll column from him "I used to be Democrat, until they elected Nancy Pelosi as Speaker..."

I will give him pointz for at least calling out Jenna and Not-Jenna on their emulation of their parents "give a shit" attitude about the suffering and dying of young Americans sent to fight in a War of Choice started by their brain-dead father.

This is almost poetic justice. I guess now that the republican party has been sent to the minority in both houses of congress, it's time for the minor winguts with Delusions of Grandeur to step forth. Case in Point: Sam Brownback of Kansas (what's the matter with Kansas...? Progressive Governor, asshat Senators).

Republican Sen. Sam Brownback, a favorite of the religious right, said Monday he is taking the first step toward launching a bid for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.

A vigorous abortion opponent, the Kansas senator pledged to make "issues of life," fiscal restraint and tax reform key components of his effort to woo supporters.

Apart from McCain and Giuliani, other potential GOP contenders for the White House include Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Gov. George Pataki of New York, Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, Rep. Duncan Hunter of California and former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson.

Know what? Not interested. I don't think it's going to offer anything more than cover for an idiot president, and the enablers in Congress and his administration who should have been monitoring and overseeing this mess from it's misbegotten inception to it's unseemly demise.

The "bi-partisan" report is already being discounted by the man who consults his "higher father" in matters of foreign policy. His Deciderness has already made up his two petulant brain-cells that he's gonna stay even if Laura and Barney are his only supporters. He's resolute, after all.

So all the spin and other hype aside, there will be no good outcome from the whole thing. Yet another 'plan' consigned to the trash heap of history by the Decider and his sycophantic minions. After all, accepting the premise of the report is admitting that the whole Excellent Adventure has been a colosally mis-managed fuck-up. And that's just na ga ha pen (apologies to Atrios).

I'm guessing that when the 110th Congress is seated in about a month, they're going to have a tough road beginning the long, slow task of oversight. I'm sure that the machinery is already being dusted off by guys like Charlie Rangel, Henry Waxman and John Conyers, their staffs are probably looking at who gets first shot at the committee rooms with the best C-SPAN access, not for grandstanding (although, I'm sure the showboats like Biden in the Senate will come out), but for making sure that the total lack of oversight by the Rubber-Stamp Republicans is emphasized as being a reason for the current utter chaos in government.

Case in point. Heckuva-job FEMA just got bitch-slapped by a federal judger for being going places Ebenezer Scrooge only dreamed of. If it were up to FEMA to toss people in debtors prison, they'd probably make a note in the Federal Register, and open the first prison next year. But I digress...the administrator of FEMA is already sending a bit "fuck you" to Congress over the issue of their treatment of poor people (you know, the ones they discovered lived in New Orleans, then ignored).

Bush administration defenders see good news in the drop. Those still receiving aid were most dependent before Katrina, mostly single mothers on welfare, while the rest are back on their feet, said Ronald D. Utt, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank.

"From a human suffering point of view, I think it's good news," Utt said. Even for lower-income people who would struggle to pay higher rents in New Orleans while looking for work, he said, "a lot of people have simply found it easier to stay where they are, which are probably places of greater opportunity than New Orleans."

"They're underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them"

So, Mr. Paulinson, Heckuva-job Brownie's successor then tosses the gauntlet down to Congress...

But, he also said: "We have to resist the call for additional investigations unless they're based on new evidence and allegations. Rather than conduct additional studies, inquiries, analysis that look backward and tell us what we really already know, we should continue to focus on correcting the problems."

I'm gonna be loving my DVR this year. If there is a move to impeach, it'll be for high crimes and misdemeanors uncovered in the course of regular oversight. It won't be sexy and it probably won't even make the news when it comes to light, but remember, Al Capone went down for income taxes not murder.

Pass the popcorn, baby.

The leaked "memo for the record" written by Rummy in perhaps his early McNamara moment (because he's so fucking old that by the time he has the "McNamara moment" of sort-of-remorse that McNamara had, he'll have been dead and gone for probably 15 years, or be a drooling idiot like ala Grampaw Simpson) is a real gem.

More of his vaunted "transformational thinking":

...He called for reaching out to U.S. military retirees and reservists to "aggressively beef up" Iraqi ministries, adding, "i.e. give up on trying to get other USG Departments to do it."

Similarly, he called for a "massive program for unemployed youth" but said it would have to be run by U.S. forces, "since no other organization could do it."

Self-serving and delusional indeed. I guess that no one told Rumsfeld that you go to war with the military you have. Until you use them up.

Asshole.

Ah, Punkin'haid don't disappoint, that's fer sher. Watching Press the Meet this morning, and Steven Hadley (R-Neocon Liar) was on blabbing about Iraq. Not having the transcript (and yes, I'll update this when I have it) he said that the situation in Iraq would have been different if they had had 150,000 to 200,000 Iraqi troops to help stablize the security situation after "Mission Accomplished". Of course, Mr. Hadley is from the Department of Rewriting History, Inc. a wholly-owned subsidiary of the 1600 Crew. What part of His Imperial Demi-Godness Jerry Bremer's ill-advised order dissolving the Iraqi Army with the blessing and encouragement of every Neocon from Beloved Leader to Doug Feith does he not remember?

Timmeh did not challenge the assertion that the the "Iraqi Army just melted away".

Timmeh is an idiot, shill and deserves the scorn of left blogtopia. And he proved why once again. Nice one, Timmeh. Soft Balls, much?

****UPDATE***
The MTP transcript is up. Here's the exchange:

MR. RUSSERT: How about troop levels?

MR. HADLEY: He's, he's acknowledged that, that in terms of troops we need to be building Iraqi forces to provide greater security. You know, Tim, people forget that, that we had hoped to have 150,000 to 200,000 Iraqi army forces to help in the security proposition, and those forces melted away at the close of the war. ...

As American forces advanced, regular Iraqi soldiers abandoned their arms and ran away in droves. Yet in one of his first orders as the American overseer of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer disbanded the entire Iraqi army.

Bremer's order deprived U.S. commanders of men they'd planned to recall to help keep order and secure Iraq's borders. It compounded the problems created by the Bush administration's failure to plan for securing Iraq and its mistaken estimate of how many American troops it would take to do that. It threw legions of angry, defeated Iraqis out of work, handed the budding anti-U.S. insurgency a recruiting windfall and fueled suspicions that America had come not to liberate Iraq, but to seize its oil.

The May 23, 2003, order was one of a succession of postwar American blunders that squandered a spectacular military victory and plunged the United States into a grinding guerrilla war at the head of the Persian Gulf and in the heart of the Islamic world.

Reportering is sooo hard, Timmeh. I know that's why no follow-up to such an obvious revisionist lie was forthcoming. Especially with your tongue so firmly in Hadley's ass.

1. Lieberfuck
   
2. Didja ever wonder?
   
3. Kinsley- Decidedly a Dick
   
4. Splitting Wingnuts
   
5. Baker-Hamilton/ISG II
   
6. The need to investigate...
   
7. Rummy's List
   
8. Timmeh, Timmeh, Timmeh