I don't know why I can't learn. After each large accretion of bad news for Bush, I'm off eagerly scanning conservative extremist (DO NOT SAY "right wing" anymore!) blogs to see if they are eating humble pie. This past week, with retired Army and Marine generals slamming Bush and Rumsfeld as steadily as a metronome, I thought, "This time, they've got to be reeling. This is their own beloved MILITARY speaking up now. This time they have to be on the ropes!"
Silly me.
Please follow me over the hump.
The Bush Oyster Cult is, at this very minute, while you read this, doing its best to change the old saying to "Hell hath no fury like a Bush cultist scorned."
Over at blogsforbush.com, Mark Noonan posted "In Defense of Donald Rumsfeld."
The calls for Rumsfeld's head are actually just an attack on President Bush. We expect it from the left, but the critics on the right really should ashamed of themselves. The only thing I can think of is that the right wing critics are actually believing MSM gloom-and-doom about the war and are casting about for a scapegoat. Pathetic. Really, fellow righties - grow a pair, already.
Note the usual Leninist formulation that the basic problem is, gasp, "MSM gloom-and-doom." In other words, the agit-prop is not working as it should.
But if you really want to see heads swelling and exploding, you have to dive into the comments:
On Britt's show today, Kuarthammer said the six generals were dissidents, and Barnes said the generals were providing aid to the enemy, and that the enemy would use this!!!
Posted by: Barneyg2000 at April 14, 2006 06:55 PM
Barney,
Of course the enemy will - and the generals should know better; and as they are out of the military loop, they are not in a position to judge the military situation any more than any other informed, outside observer.
Posted by: Mark Noonan at April 14, 2006 07:20 PM
There are now six COWARDLY armchair generals providing aid and comfort to the enemy!
Apparently they didn't have the gonads to air their grievances when they were "in the loop," opting, instead, to wait until they wouldn't suffer any ramifications to their pensions or positions. Then they strike together with the jihad media in a coordinated attack of publicity, hoping to get maximum leverage for their cause...
It's so transparent that it's ridiculous...
The military isn't "broken." The retired axe-grinding generals are the broken part in this equation... as in, broken record...
Posted by: dbogdan at April 14, 2006 08:41 PM
And from comments to "Bush Supports Rummy" by blogsforbush.com founder Matt Margolis:
6 generals out of 1000's of active and retired are saying anything negative yet it's on the front page of the NY Times (shocking) and blasted on the news and sucked up by the left in volumes akin to Viagra consumption for a 70 year old in a college sorority for the first time.
The handle chosen by this drooling, knuckle-dragging Bush sycophant is - are you ready for this - Warriornation.
It is also interesting that a number of commentators pile on Warriornation and the various other Bush Oyster Cult commentators and beat them to a frazzle. Some of these might be wayward conservative extremists who need to "grow a pair" but I suspect that there are a number of progressives who find a strange sort of thrill or pleasure out of engaging the Bush cultists in textual combat. I've done it myself a few times, and recommend it to anyone who sometimes despairs of dKos being an progressive echo chamber and /or who would like to sharpen their debating skills and hone their killer instinct.
Over at redstate.com, Mark Kilmer has crossposted from his rightsided.org a nice little screed entitled "Firing spitballs at Rumsfeld:"
they are not immune to bias, these lonely six retired generals out of... how many generals have retired in the last decade?
Don Rumsfeld wants to modernize the Army, making it a quick, lean force of about half a million. The Army brass wanted the old model million-man-Army. They will quite naturally be predisposed against Rumsfeld. Here's a confident civilian manager telling them how big their Army should be.
So, now the extremist conservatives are lining up with the (previously) hated old lefty position of radically downsizing the military? All it took was a few jabs at Fearless Feckless Leader by some 3- and 4-stars to make them see the light?
Kilmer ends by dismissing the stories about the generals as "a media-driven story... they quest for the next Watergate, quagmire, Vietnam. It seems they want to create it so they can cover it." But, again, the real fun is in the comments. This time, we find the spore of the creepy-crawly little beastie that now has retired U.S. generals in their mouth-foamed sights. Some cretin going by the handle of mbecker908 gets the first swing in:
This is simply conduct unbecoming an officer of the US military. They should be ashamed but they obviously don't have the character to be ashamed.
Newbold and Zinni were both opposed to the war from day 1. They could not sell their position to the JCS or to Rumsfeld. This is sour grapes, pure and simple. They deserve to be put in a home with John Murtha where they can drool on each other.
Oh, Zinni's on a book tour. Double the lack of character comment for him.
The four Army Generals are million man Army guys who didn't get listened to either. And, oh by the way, their big complaint is that Rumsfeld was A.B.R.A.S.I.V.E. ? Not a team builder? Oh my. These guys are supposed be commanding people who's job is to break things and kill people. And their upset because their bosses bosses boss is abrasive? Good riddance.
The correct individuals have retired.
I hope all you military people out there take note of what these parasites think of you once you are no longer willing to follow their orders to lay the big hurt on any country that dares oppose the U.S. corpgov kleptocracy.
Why, dear reader, am I forcing you to endure this drivel? Fair enough for you to ask. The point I’m driving to, is who exactly is mbecker908? Not content to savage the names of six military men who have put their lives on the line, mbecker908 replies to a commenter who approves of Rummy having“cleaned house” to get rid of these six loud-mouth generals:
Personally, I thought he waited too long and hasn't gone deep enough. I spent 25 years doing corporate turnarounds. I learned early on to cut deep and to do it quickly.
Corporate turnarounds. Yeah, U.S. corporations and the U.S. economy in general are in such EXCELLENT shape now, after 25 years of the likes of mbecker908 turning them around, that the
U.S. cannot even produce enough small arms ammunition for its ground forces.