Little Green Footballs are only for giggly rightwing toddlers who can't catch yet, not for adult players and certainly not for pros. So I smirk when I read a flubbed pass-of-a-comment like
this over at No Quarter (where LGFers often stop by to "act out"), "As you liberals have a circle jerk over this mindless blog posting, you may want to stop drinking the 'hate Bush' Kool-aid for 2 seconds and try to focus" -- which was ably rebutted by
Canuck Stuck In Muck.
The LGFers are too immature to know that their faux president is a toddler, who, but for his daddy's largesse and connections, would be pumpin' gas and servin' fifty-cent hotdogs at a 7-11 in Waco.
The big problem for grown-ups is that the Bush administration has created international problems of immense proportion that will take decades to undo.
Bush Will Yank U.S. Troops If There's A Civil War in Iraq
Richard Wolffe of Newsweek broke news on MNSBC at around 5AM PT, saying that, if there's civil war in Iraq, the White House plans to pull U.S. troops out:
Aug. 14, 2006 issue - The Bush administration insists Iraq is a long way from civil war, but the contingency planning has already begun inside the White House and the Pentagon. President Bush will move U.S. troops out of Iraq if the country descends into civil war, according to one senior Bush aide who declined to be named while talking about internal strategy. -- From "Exclusive: Iraq--Plans in Case of a Civil War," Newsweek/MSNBC
Of course, a grown-up like Pat Lang has called the violence in Iraq a civil war for a long time:
"It's just political rhetoric to say we are not in a civil war. We've been in a civil war for a long time," said Pat Lang, the former top Middle East intelligence official at the Pentagon.
From "Experts: Iraq verges on civil war," Newsday, published on May 12, 2005.
And the U.S. troops in Iraq agree.
I wonder what Pat will think of Wolffe's revelation.
And Wolffe writes baldly that the prospects are grim, if and when the Bush administration decides on its definition of civil war and bails on Iraq:
The administration hasn't made its definition of full-blown civil war explicit. But in March, when Iraq's former prime minister Ayad Allawi said the country was already fighting a civil war, Bush disagreed, noting the existence of Iraq's nonsectarian Army and government. If the country did someday meet the definition of civil war and the U.S. pulled out, military officials warn, the consequences would be disastrous. "All the neighboring powers would be drawn in," said one senior military official who has examined the scenarios and is not authorized to speak on the record. "It would become a regional war."
The LGFers on Lebanon
The LGFers are crowing that "Hizballah kingpin Hassan Nasrallah" has "practically begged" Arab leaders to "help promote a ceasefire." Funniest thing though: I have yet to hear a single analyst who doesn't think that Nasrallah, by surviving and continuing to fight fiercely, has won the war so far, and the 10 dead Israelis today might agree.
In "Sharon Set The Stage His Heir Reacts On" the NYT asserts, "If Israel's war with Hezbollah ends for Israel as badly as it has started, it could well mean a harsh coda to Ariel Sharon's life's work." In "Israeli Soldiers Expected Lesser Foe," the LAT adds, "Some express frustration about the campaign and surprise over Hezbollah's forces." The Seattle Times features "Hezbollah's charity wins southern Lebanese loyalty." And the Christian Science Monitor front-pages "The uneven calculus of Mideast victory": "Hizbullah may 'win' this war, now in its fourth week, by merely surviving."
From Ha'aretz, August 4, 2006:
Ending the neoconservative nightmare
By Daniel Levy
Witnessing the near-perfect symmetry of Israeli and American policy has been one of the more noteworthy aspects of the latest Lebanon war. A true friend in the White House. No deescalate and stabilize, honest-broker, diplomatic jaw-jaw from this president. Great. Except that Israel was actually in need of an early exit strategy, had its diplomatic options narrowed by American weakness and marginalization in the region, and found itself ratcheting up aerial and ground operations in ways that largely worked to Hezbollah's advantage, the Qana tragedy included. The American ladder had gone AWOL. ...
By the way, Lebanon has "officially" rejected the proposed resolution announced yesterday at the U.N. Billmon offers an analysis of the resolution in "The Portmanteau Resolution."
Today, David Brooks writes about a conversation he had with a "policy maker":
Washington is full of conversations, but occasionally you have one with a policy maker that sheds light on where we've been and where we're going. I had one of those conversations late last week, and I thought it might be useful to share a truncated version of it here.
Policy Maker: Israel began this war with an almost unprecedented level of legitimacy. Unfortunately, that was forfeited during the first days with the bombing campaign, which seemed to punish all of Lebanon instead of just Hezbollah. If Sharon were still functioning, perhaps he would have insisted on a better plan, but this may be another case of a just war poorly executed.
Me: But wasn't this war a test case of whether it is even possible to defeat a terrorist force with military might? After all, no army is going to know this kind of enemy better than Israel's. Maybe the Islamists have simply come up with a conceptual breakthrough that makes them difficult to defeat. They've grasped that the more they endanger their own people and get them killed, the better it is for them politically. Israel or the U.S. gets blamed. That's like a superweapon in the media war.
Has Israel at least degraded Hezbollah militarily?
P: Not enough to give them the sense they're being defeated. In any case, we've worked out an arrangement with France that should stop the fighting early next week. This may sound odd, but U.S. relations with France have hardly been better. We're working remarkably closely across a whole range of Middle East issues because we have the same understanding and goals. ... From "Talking About Terror," NYT, August 6, 2006, sub. only
A test case, Mr. Brooks? Like Iraq?
Some strategery.
The word "Strategery" was first used in a Saturday Night Live sketch aired October 7, 2000, satirizing the performances of Al Gore and George W. Bush, two candidates for President of the United States, during the first presidential debate for election year 2000. [1] Comedian Will Ferrell played Bush and used the word "strategery" (a play on the words "strategy" and "strategic") to satirize Bush's reputation for mispronouncing words. The episode was later released as part of a video tape titled Presidential Bash 2000. [...]
The term is now widely used in popular discourse, often by Bush's critics to ridicule his oratory skills. Actual damaging quotations made by Bush have sometimes been dubbed "Bushisms" by his political opponents. ... (Wikipedia)
Image source: About's Political Humor
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A variation will be cross-posted at No Quarter.