Crooks and Liars: “We’re all French now…
By: John Amato @ 11:29 AM – PST Submit or Digg this Post

Greenwald on Richard Cohen

The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen, 2/6/2003, on Colin Powell’s speech to the UN:

This is where Colin Powell brought us all yesterday. The evidence he presented to the United Nations — some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail — had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn’t accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool — or possibly a Frenchman — could conclude otherwise.

Keep reading…”

Crooks and Liars: “Judy Miller has second thoughts on the Bush Administration
By: Nicole Belle @ 5:15 PM – PST Submit or Digg this Post

Wow, Judy, it only took you 85 days in jail, two ill-planned wars that have gone all to hell, a record deficit, the disdain of the global community and the shredding of the Constitution to figure this out? Welcome to the reality-based community.

Topeka Capital-Journal:

Judith Miller, a former New York Times investigative reporter who went to jail to protect a confidential source, said the balance between national security and civil liberties has been tipped, allowing the Bush administration to become secretive about its decisions, intrusive into public lives and reluctant to share information the public has a right to know.

Miller said many Americans don’t understand how their access to information and the freedom of the press have been affected in the past few years.

‘We are less free and less safe,’ she said, explaining that there is a ‘growing secrecy in the name of national security.’ Read on…

This is my favorite part:

‘I’m worried about bloggers,’ she said. ‘(A post) starts as a rumor and within 24 hours it’s repeated as fact.’

While she advocates a federal shield law to protect mainstream journalists from divulging their sources, she doesn’t favor “

Instaputz: Stumbling into total incoherence.: “Stumbling into total incoherence.
Putz is now saying he agrees with Nancy Pelosi on Iraq.

Related thoughts from Jon Henke, who thinks that Nancy Pelosi might be onto something by saying Iraq isn’t a war: ‘If it were a war, we could win it by killing people and blowing stuff up. While security problems necessarily involve the occasional application of force, the dominant difficulties in Iraq simply aren’t force-on-force problems. The remaining problems are sociopolitical. No amount of firepower is going to resolve the intractable conflicts of interest between the Shiites and the Sunnis, or between various subgroups. No US troop level will convince the rival Iraqi factions that pluralism is better than asserting their own interests. They’ll either find it in their interest to moderate. . .or they won’t.’

I think that’s right — as I’ve said before, it’s a political rather than a military issue, which is why I’ve been unpersuaded by the more-troops argument.

Leaving aside the obvious fact that adding more troops isn’t mutually exclusive with supporting a political mission, since more troops would theoretically provide more security, what happened to sitting on our bayonets and the loss of momentum? What happened to all of the confident announcements that ‘we’re winning’ supported by historical kill ratios?…

Instaputz: So that’s what we’re doing wrong in Iraq.: “So that’s what we’re doing wrong in Iraq.
Now this is the Putz we all know and ridicule.

RALPH PETERS ON IRAQ: ‘With political correctness permeating our government and even the upper echelons of the military, we never tried the one technique that has a solid track record of defeating insurgents if applied consistently: the rigorous imposition of public order. That means killing the bad guys.’

I really hope the Iraq Study Group takes note of this. See, those notoriously politically-correct generals, reporting to that squishy, politically-correct President, are simply killing insufficient numbers of bad Arabs.

Problem solved!”

Think Progress: “Frist’s Post-Election Revelation: We Are ‘Not Winning’ In Iraq »

Last night on Fox News, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) was asked to explain the midterm election results. Frist answered, “clearly, number one, the fact that we were not winning in Iraq dominated.” Watch it:

What a difference an election makes. In July, Frist said the conservative national security message for 2006 was, “We’re for staying the course in Iraq and the war on terror.” And as recently as last month, Frist said the U.S. was making “tremendous progress” in Iraq.

I’m confident that we are making tremendous progress in hunting down and killing the murderers of Islamic fascism, in stabilizing the democratic governments of Afghanistan and Iraq and in winning the generational struggle that is the War on Terror.

Full transcript:”

FOX NEWS INTERNAL MEMO: “Be On The Lookout For Any Statements From The Iraqi Insurgents…Thrilled At The Prospect Of A Dem Controlled Congress”…

Think Progress: “Trent Lott is back.

In a 25-24 vote, the Senate Republican caucus has elected Trent Lott (R-MS) as Minority Whip, the #2 minority position in the Senate. As expected, Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was elected Senate Minority Leader. Lott, who defeated Lamar Alexander (R-TN), resigned his post as Minority Leader in 2002 after he said the United States would have avoided “all these problems” if then-segregationist Strom Thurmond had been elected president in 1948.

Think Progress » Bush Tells Barnes Capturing Bin Laden Is ‘Not A Top Priority Use of American Resources’

The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) 809.ART.90 (20), makes it clear that military personnel need to obey the ‘lawful command of his superior officer,’ 891.ART.91 (2), the ‘lawful order of a warrant officer’, 892.ART.92 (1) the ‘lawful general order’, 892.ART.92 (2) ‘lawful order’. In each case, military personnel have an obligation and a duty to only obey Lawful orders and indeed have an obligation to disobey Unlawful orders, including orders by the president that do not comply with the UCMJ. The moral and legal obligation is to the U.S. Constitution and not to those who would issue unlawful orders, especially if those orders are in direct violation of the Constitution and the UCMJ.

During the Iran-Contra hearings of 1987, Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, a decorated World War II veteran and hero, told Lt. Col. Oliver North that North was breaking his oath when he blindly followed the commands of Ronald Reagan. As Inouye stated, ‘The uniform code makes it abundantly clear that it must be the Lawful orders of a superior officer. In fact it says, ‘Members of the military have an obligation to disobey unlawful orders.’ This principle was considered so important that we-we, the government of the United States, proposed that it be internationally applied in the Nuremberg trials.’ (Bill Moyers, ‘The Secret Government’, Seven Locks Press”

“Christ on a cracker”