August 11, 2006
Nailhead, vol. III
Today's nailhead award goes to the lovely Arianna Huffington (who could, in my opinion, hold her own with Mark Twain and H.L Mencken). In this excerpt from a recent blog on The Huffington Post, she offers up a stern missive to the Reapuplickins whilst telling Dippycrats its time to shit or get off the pot.
At a time when the real enemies in the war on terror have reared their murderous heads (exploding shampoo? No need to sex that up), to hear Dick Cheney and company using illogical, over-the-top, fear-mongering rhetoric conflating Ned Lamont's victory with the war on terror is as deeply offensive as it is jaw-droppingly outrageous.
Chutzpah doesn't even begin to describe the Vice President of the United States suggesting that the outcome of the Connecticut primary might embolden “al Qaeda types.”
The GOP message machine knows how ludicrous it is to keep tying the war in Iraq to the war on terror, but they also know how effective it has been. So there they go again, with Cheney claiming that Lieberman was “pushed aside because of his willingness to support an aggressive posture in terms of our national security.”
Cheney knows damn well that, far from making us safer, “an aggressive posture” on Iraq has had the exact opposite effect. In a survey of 100 top foreign-policy experts (both Republicans and Democrats), 84 believed that we're losing the war on terror and 87 thought Iraq has had a negative impact on our efforts to defeat terrorists.
Here's the bottom line: Ned Lamont ran against the war in Iraq, a war that Joe Lieberman vehemently supported and still supports. A war that 60 percent of Americans are against. A war that is the defining foreign policy initiative of the Bush administration, an initiative that has been an abject failure on every level. A war that has put the GOP's back against the electoral wall. So it's firing back with it's favorite weapon, fear, trying to make the case that being against the war somehow makes Lamont soft on national security or, as RNC chair Ken Mehlman put it, “a leading proponent of the isolationist, defeatist, blame-America-first philosophy.”
Talk about desperate. So do Cheney/Rove/Mehlman really believe that 60 percent of the public are blame-America-firsters? Or that because 60 percent of us agree that Iraq is a disaster, we somehow don't, in Cheney's words, “have the will to stay in the fight and complete the task" of taking on the terrorists - and thus are encouraging al Qaeda types?
Of course not. They know being against the war in Iraq doesn't mean you are against fighting the war on terror. It means you are against a failed policy that has created more terrorists than it has killed, that has cost America 2,591 lives and $305 billion dollars, that has thrown Iraq into a bloody sectarian civil war, and that has so lessened our standing abroad that we are unable to be a real power broker in an exploding Middle East.
You want to know what really emboldens our enemies? It's not Ned Lamont beating Joe Lieberman; it's the idea of an impotent United States so over-extended and bogged down in Iraq that it has been pushed to the diplomatic sidelines.
What Lamont's victory should really do is embolden Democrats to aggressively counterattack the Republicans' scare tactics nonsense. Every Democratic leader should do the same every day, without fail, until the message finally breaks through the static. John Kerry effectively counterattacked, saying the thwarted London attacks “expose the myth that we are fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here. In fact, the war in Iraq has become a dangerous distraction... Nearly five years after the attacks of 9/11, we are not as safe as we can and must be... The 9/11 Commission's recommendations to secure our most vulnerable infrastructure remain virtually ignored.”
One of the main reasons this has happened is that Congressional Democrats have failed to hold the Bush administration accountable for taking its eye off the national security ball in order to pursue its imperial adventure in Iraq. It's worth noting that the ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee is none other than Joe Lieberman, whose belief in bipartisan comity has kept him from holding the White House's feet to the fire. No wonder Karl Rove wanted to help him out, and Dick Cheney feels so concerned by his defeat.
Cheney and Rove know that this battle is for all the marbles. If Democrats can't effectively repudiate the GOP's fear-mongering strategy of linking Iraq to national security, they can kiss 2006 - and 2008 - good-bye.
Tell 'em sistah !
At a time when the real enemies in the war on terror have reared their murderous heads (exploding shampoo? No need to sex that up), to hear Dick Cheney and company using illogical, over-the-top, fear-mongering rhetoric conflating Ned Lamont's victory with the war on terror is as deeply offensive as it is jaw-droppingly outrageous.
Chutzpah doesn't even begin to describe the Vice President of the United States suggesting that the outcome of the Connecticut primary might embolden “al Qaeda types.”
The GOP message machine knows how ludicrous it is to keep tying the war in Iraq to the war on terror, but they also know how effective it has been. So there they go again, with Cheney claiming that Lieberman was “pushed aside because of his willingness to support an aggressive posture in terms of our national security.”
Cheney knows damn well that, far from making us safer, “an aggressive posture” on Iraq has had the exact opposite effect. In a survey of 100 top foreign-policy experts (both Republicans and Democrats), 84 believed that we're losing the war on terror and 87 thought Iraq has had a negative impact on our efforts to defeat terrorists.
Here's the bottom line: Ned Lamont ran against the war in Iraq, a war that Joe Lieberman vehemently supported and still supports. A war that 60 percent of Americans are against. A war that is the defining foreign policy initiative of the Bush administration, an initiative that has been an abject failure on every level. A war that has put the GOP's back against the electoral wall. So it's firing back with it's favorite weapon, fear, trying to make the case that being against the war somehow makes Lamont soft on national security or, as RNC chair Ken Mehlman put it, “a leading proponent of the isolationist, defeatist, blame-America-first philosophy.”
Talk about desperate. So do Cheney/Rove/Mehlman really believe that 60 percent of the public are blame-America-firsters? Or that because 60 percent of us agree that Iraq is a disaster, we somehow don't, in Cheney's words, “have the will to stay in the fight and complete the task" of taking on the terrorists - and thus are encouraging al Qaeda types?
Of course not. They know being against the war in Iraq doesn't mean you are against fighting the war on terror. It means you are against a failed policy that has created more terrorists than it has killed, that has cost America 2,591 lives and $305 billion dollars, that has thrown Iraq into a bloody sectarian civil war, and that has so lessened our standing abroad that we are unable to be a real power broker in an exploding Middle East.
You want to know what really emboldens our enemies? It's not Ned Lamont beating Joe Lieberman; it's the idea of an impotent United States so over-extended and bogged down in Iraq that it has been pushed to the diplomatic sidelines.
What Lamont's victory should really do is embolden Democrats to aggressively counterattack the Republicans' scare tactics nonsense. Every Democratic leader should do the same every day, without fail, until the message finally breaks through the static. John Kerry effectively counterattacked, saying the thwarted London attacks “expose the myth that we are fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here. In fact, the war in Iraq has become a dangerous distraction... Nearly five years after the attacks of 9/11, we are not as safe as we can and must be... The 9/11 Commission's recommendations to secure our most vulnerable infrastructure remain virtually ignored.”
One of the main reasons this has happened is that Congressional Democrats have failed to hold the Bush administration accountable for taking its eye off the national security ball in order to pursue its imperial adventure in Iraq. It's worth noting that the ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee is none other than Joe Lieberman, whose belief in bipartisan comity has kept him from holding the White House's feet to the fire. No wonder Karl Rove wanted to help him out, and Dick Cheney feels so concerned by his defeat.
Cheney and Rove know that this battle is for all the marbles. If Democrats can't effectively repudiate the GOP's fear-mongering strategy of linking Iraq to national security, they can kiss 2006 - and 2008 - good-bye.
Tell 'em sistah !
Comments:
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I never understood why people bought that "fight them there, so we don't have to fight them here" crap, when we knew from the beginning that they are everywhere.
Did you see Cal Thomas last week? He called the people who voted for Lamont "Taliban Democrats". I guess we should call anyone who doesn't mind warrantless wiretaps the "KGB Republicans".
Did you see Cal Thomas last week? He called the people who voted for Lamont "Taliban Democrats". I guess we should call anyone who doesn't mind warrantless wiretaps the "KGB Republicans".
# posted by 
: August 15, 2006 7:28 AM
: August 15, 2006 7:28 AM
Arianna seems to consistenly and clearly expose the inherent hypocrisy and sleaze of the arch neo-cons, but she tends to preach to the converted.
It's sad that think that so large a segment of our population has been frightened, bullied, and badgered into accepting the sort of disgusting nonsense coming from Bushco every day. I hope against hope that it's because of the sophisticated propaganda woven by Rove, et al, but I can't also help thinking that a lot of Americans are just stupid. I mean, only a complete moron without the capacity for either logical thought or rudimentary reasoning powers still believe Iraq and 9/11 are even remotely connected.
There seem to be many morons about.
Ook ook
It's sad that think that so large a segment of our population has been frightened, bullied, and badgered into accepting the sort of disgusting nonsense coming from Bushco every day. I hope against hope that it's because of the sophisticated propaganda woven by Rove, et al, but I can't also help thinking that a lot of Americans are just stupid. I mean, only a complete moron without the capacity for either logical thought or rudimentary reasoning powers still believe Iraq and 9/11 are even remotely connected.
There seem to be many morons about.
Ook ook
I'll say this: If we didn't have such an incompetant administration in charge the Iraq war could have been sucessful. I still think that it was wrong to invade Iraq (which is why I voted for Gore in 2000, I knew we were going there if Bush was elected). Why didn't we bring enough troops in the beginning to occupy the country? Why did we disband the Iraqi army? We should have doubled thier pay and put them in charge of keeping order under our direct control. I think what they were trying to achieve was the installation of a friendly regime that would allow us to have at least two large American military bases (Ala Subic Bay Naval Base and Clark field Airbase) so that we could pull out of Saudi Arabia yet still project our power in the region. This would probably have worked out well for our stratigic interests in the region, and would have been a counterwieght to Iran. They have, however, so screwed up the execution of this goal that the best we can do now is to just get out. We will never achieve these goals, or even anything remotely positive for us by staying. We are basically presiding over the installation of a Shi-ite theocracy that will be in power with or without our help. You got to know when to hold-em, know when to fold-em, as the song goes.
Arianna is awesome. She's at her best when she's bantering with someone like Al Franken, because in addition to being an astute and intelligent political mind, she's funny as hell, too.
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