Better than nothing

Daily Kos reports today that the Massachusetts School of Law is organizing a Bush War Crimes Trial, a preparation meeting for which is to be held in September:

"This is not intended to be a mere discussion of violations of law that have occurred," said convener Lawrence Velvel, dean and cofounder of the school. "It is, rather, intended to be a planning conference at which plans will be laid and necessary organizational structures set up, to pursue the guilty as long as necessary and, if need be, to the ends of the Earth."

A fake war crimes trial for a fake president who started a fake war with fake intelligence: sounds good to me. At least someone is headed in the right direction!

"Surge" is passe

There's a new buzzword in town -- "pause":

"Washington - Concerns in Iraq that recent security gains are fragile and could backslide mean that President Bush is likely to hand over to his successor a war being fought by as many as 140,000 US troops – about the same number as before the "surge" of some 35,000 troops announced in January 2007.

The White House says Mr. Bush will not make any decisions on troop levels in Iraq until after Gen. David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Iraq, testify before Congress April 8 and 9. But with General Petraeus already recommending against further drawdowns beyond those set to take place by July, and with Vice President Dick Cheney suggesting that further reductions are unlikely to be put in place now, it seems doubtful that Bush would go in any other direction."

Talk about Mission Accomplished. As the year ticks down to the next presidential election, it's finally safe for the Bush administration to announce that there'll be no further troop reductions in Iraq. Instead, the sucker who gets into the White House in November will be left with an ongoing disaster of a war, including troops still deployed at pre-"surge" levels. And Georgie's just a-skatin' away.

But Georgie's been getting other people to follow him with bandaids and toilet paper and clean up his messes all his miserable douchebag life. Why change now?

UPDATE: Nothing succeeds like success, eh?

Fidel Castro resigns

Shorter CASTRO: "I quit!"

Shorter E.U.: "Bring democracy to Cuba!."

Shorter GEORGIE: "I'll help!"

Shorter Rest of the World: "SHRIEEEEEEEEEEK!!!"

Daddy Bush speaks

"Leave my Georgie alone!":

"Former president George H.W. Bush forcefully defended his son's handling of the Iraq war Thursday, saying critics of the current president have forgotten the "extraordinary brutality" of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

"Do they want to bring back Saddam Hussein, these critics?" the elder Bush told USA TODAY in a rare interview. "Do they want to go back to the status quo ante? I don't know what they are talking about here. Do they think life would be better in the Middle East if Saddam were still there?""

I don't know. Why not ask the Iraqis?:

"BAGHDAD — Only a third of the Iraqi people now believe that the American-led occupation of their country is doing more good than harm, and a solid majority support an immediate military pullout even though they fear that could put them in greater danger, according to a new USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll."

But wait. That was from 3 and a half years ago, before Civil War set in. Surely things must be better by now:

"This is the third poll in Iraq sponsored by ABC News and media partners -- in this case USA Today, the BBC and ARD German TV -- and the changes are grim. In November 2005, 63 percent of Iraqis felt very safe in their neighborhoods. Today just 26 percent say the same. One in three doesn't feel safe at all. In Baghdad, home to a fifth of the country's population, that skyrockets: Eighty-four percent feel entirely unsafe."

A physically and psychologically trashed and shellshocked nation. Between 2.5-4.5% of their pre-war population has been wiped out in this chickenshit, illegal "war for no-bid contracts"... with no end in sight. If George Senior thinks his baffled little nitwit of a son has done a fine job in Iraq, he must be referring to the fine job he's done fucking it up beyond repair.

Georgie spends like a drunken sailor

How do small-government conservatives square this? According to the right-wing think tank the Cato Institute, Georgie is the biggest spending president since LBJ (who also had a war going on, so that's no excuse). There's no denying it, Georgie's a Spending Fool:

"When adjusted for inflation, discretionary spending — or budget items that Congress and the president can control, including defense and domestic programs, but not entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare — shot up at an average annual rate of 5.3 percent during Bush’s first six years, Slivinski calculates.

That tops the 4.6 percent annual rate Johnson logged during his 1963-69 presidency. By these standards, Ronald Reagan was a tightwad; discretionary spending grew by only 1.9 percent a year on his watch.

Discretionary spending went up in Bush's first term by 48.5 percent, not adjusted for inflation, more than twice as much as Bill Clinton did (21.6 percent) in two full terms, Slivinski reports." [...]

"Homeland security spending also has soared, to about $31 billion last year, triple the pre-9/11 number."

This is where I get lost. It makes sense that homeland security spending would increase, but what the hell are they spending it on? Hurricane Katrina should have been a shining showcase of FEMA/homeland security capabilities, and that mess speaks for itself. With all the billions spent, that was the best they could do in an emergency? There's obviously a lot of money being made scammed by people who aren't actually doing anything for it. It makes things like FEMA's fake news briefing last week all the more aggravating.

He said she said

One of the first things I learned in advertising was "CYA" -- document everything, every meeting, every discussion, every phone call... just in case. Because if the shit hits the fan, as it often does when people are making quick decisions, you need Evidence that you alone weren't responsible for the shitstorm. CYA, otherwise it's all "he said she said" and the guy with the documentation wins.

In 2003, the US made one pivotal decision in Iraq that arguably did more to exacerbate the insurgency than anything else (short of the actual invasion itself) -- inexplicably disbanding the Iraqi army. A standing army was handed pink slips ("Yer fired!"x 300,000) and sent home with their Kalashnikovs. Guys who knew where the weapons caches were, some with access to said caches, all suddenly unemployed and pissed off. The head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Paul Bremer, is largely blamed for making this disastrous decision. Georgie maintains that it was a unilateral decision that he wasn't even aware of until afterwards.

Apparently Bremer knows a little about CYA, because he's countering Georgie's claim of ignorance with letters that he wrote proposing the decision to disband the army, and Bush's subsequent "Hey yeah okay, whatever" replies:

"WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 — A previously undisclosed exchange of letters shows that President Bush was told in advance by his top Iraq envoy in May 2003 of a plan to “dissolve Saddam’s military and intelligence structures,” a plan that the envoy, L. Paul Bremer, said referred to dismantling the Iraqi Army. Mr. Bremer provided the letters to The New York Times on Monday after reading that Mr. Bush was quoted in a new book as saying that American policy had been “to keep the army intact” but that it “didn’t happen.”"

Georgie now claims that he "can't remember" anything about this cataclysmically catastrophic decision. Can't remember??!!

"The policy was to keep the army intact; didn't happen," Bush told biographer Robert Draper in excerpts published in Sunday's New York Times. Draper pressed Bush to explain why, if he wanted to maintain the army, his chief administrator for Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, issued an order in May 2003 disbanding the 400,000-strong army without pay. "Yeah, I can't remember; I'm sure I said, 'This is the policy, what happened?' " Bush said, adding: "Again, Hadley's got notes on all this stuff" -- a reference to national security advisor Stephen J. Hadley.

"He said she said", Georgie: the guy with the letters wins. Now, I ask you: is that enough? Can you impeach him yet?!

Georgie mentions Al Qaeda a few times

It's almost like Georgie's building up to something.

In a speech he gave yesterday, Bush maintained that an early pullout from Iraq was out of the question because Al Qaeda would take over and wreak havoc, maybe even nuculear havoc:

"Bush declared that "the merger between al Qaeda and its Iraqi affiliate is an alliance of killers," and reiterated his longstanding argument that an early pullout would allow them to use Iraq as a safe haven for exporting violence.

"Fighting could engulf the entire region in chaos and we would soon face a Middle East dominated by Islamic extremists who would pursue nuclear weapons and use their control of oil for economic blackmail or to fund new attacks on our nation," he said."

The speech, given at an airforce base, was a pedantic half-hour wankfest during which Bush mentioned the name "Al Qaeda" 94 times. What!!? That's right, 94 times -- I counted. He also mentioned Osama Bin Laden probably about half as many times (I didn't count, be my guest).

Georgie's obviously building up to something. I just hope he's doing a CYA routine over the Iraq progress report that's due in September, and it's not something like martial law.

Update: 94 times! Just for kicks, I timed how long it would take me to say "al qaeda" 94 times. It took me almost 2 full minutes. Georgie's speech was 29 minutes long (11:50am - 12:19pm). That means a full 7% of the entire speech (words and breaks to laugh, take a breath, belch whatever) was the word(s) "al qaeda". Spectacular. I hope the neighbours didn't hear me.

Saturday morning Bush polls

From Pollster.com, polling results for the week of July 9:

Harris:

73% rate Bush's performance "poor" or "fair";
26% rate it "excellent" or "good"

70% say things in the US have "pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track";
19% say the country is "going in the right direction"

USA Today/Gallup:

76% say sending more troops to Iraq hasn't made any difference or made the situation worse;
22% say more troops have made things better

71% favour removing all troops from Iraq by April 2008;
26% oppose

And interestingly, the Pew news index:

70% say they "followed the news about current events and Iraq closely",
30% did not

Coincidence? Looking at these figures, one might surmise that the only people who approve of Georgie's performance, Iraq and the direction of the country in general are those who have no idea what the fuck is going on. Finally, an explanation for that mysterious 26% who continue to support Bush in spite of all the evidence that shows they should not. They just haven't seen the evidence.

Impeachy-keen

The latest poll numbers on Bush/Cheney impeachment support show that about half of Americans favour impeaching Georgie, for Cheney the number is significantly higher.

Bush
Favour - 45%
Oppose - 46%

Cheney
Favour - 54%
Oppose - 40%

Among Republicans, 17% are in favour of impeaching Cheney. That's Republicans, his own party! Cheney better watch his saggy, hemorrhoid-ridden, lizard-skinned old ass. Ha!