Blue Monday

A government commission's war probe accused of "severe failure," saying the nation was led hastily into conflict without a comprehensive plan. The Bush Administration? Nope - Ehud Olmert of Israel and their foolish war on Lebanon was the target of the scathing report. Though it should be noted that BushCo and the neocons cheered Olmert on.

If anyone hasn't heard about it yet, the destroyed Oakland freeway ramp is pretty damned scary. The closure will also be really inconvenient for a lot of folks until its fixed (probably a couple of months). On a personal note, I rarely use that facility, but there's a good chance the mess will reverberate to other adjacent ramps and highways. Its a miracle no one was hurt, not even the driver.

Tony Snow is back to work today as chief lie spinner for BushCo. While I certainly wish him improved health and a long life, this man should hang his head in shame.

Tragically, over 100 US soldiers have died in vain in Iraq this month.

I've noted the lack of political reconciliation in Iraq dooms the surge to failure. The lack of economic progress has the same effect in mooting the surge. This is why Iraq is the Stupid Pointless War.

Richard Perle on Crossroads/PBS: WTF?

What the hell was PBS thinking by giving Richard Perle an infomercial last night?

Death of the neocons: Part 2 (continued)

Richard Perle and Wolf square off on CNN. See the clip for yourself here at Raw Story. My take: Perle is shameless; may he rot in hell.

Neocon deathwatch: part 2

Part 2 on the individuals of a dead school of political thought - the neocons.

Richard "The Prince of Darkness" Perle. This guy really screwed the pooch. He was a major cheerleader for war, and now points his finger directly back at BushCo after they turned Iraq into a steaming mess. In 2002, Perle infamously predicted only 40,000 troops would be needed to overthrow Saddam.

Perle's hubris hit a high water mark right before the invasion, when he wrote:

Saddam Hussein's reign of terror is about to end. He will go quickly, but not alone: in a parting irony, he will take the UN down with him.

Perle served in the administration on the Defense Policy Board, when he tendered his resignation in 2004.

"We are now approaching a long presidential election campaign, in the course of which issues on which I have strong views will be widely discussed and debated," Perle wrote. "I would not wish those views to be attributed to you or the president at any time, and especially not during a presidential campaign."

Perle didn't return a telephone call seeking comment on his resignation, and a Pentagon spokesman would confirm only that he had resigned.

By 2006, Perle was ripping BushCo on the job in Iraq in a famous Vanity Fair article.

Perle and I [writer David Rose] [met] at his home outside Washington, D.C. ... Perle is unrecognizable as the confident hawk who, as chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, had invited the exiled Iraqi dissident Ahmad Chalabi to its first meeting after 9/11. "The levels of brutality that we've seen are truly horrifying, and I have to say, I underestimated the depravity[.]" ...

According to Perle, who left the Defense Policy Board in 2004, this unfolding catastrophe has a central cause: devastating dysfunction within the administration of President George W. Bush. Perle says, "The decisions did not get made that should have been. They didn't get made in a timely fashion, and the differences were argued out endlessly.… At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible.… I don't think he realized the extent of the opposition within his own administration, and the disloyalty."

Perle followed up on that with a NewsMax interview in February of this year. I've highlighted a few items - the interview is longish - but telling about the dark soul of this man.

[P]erhaps folks would better appreciate Richard Perle ... discussing how we got where we are in Iraq with the best and brightest leading the way.


Perle: We just don't have the best and the brightest. I think Colin Powell was a disaster. He never liked the president's policies. He did almost nothing to get them implemented. Condi [former head of the National Security Council and now Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice] was in way over her head from the beginning, and the president gave much too much weight to her views. The administration was full of people even in the White House at the National Security Council who were hostile to the president's policies.


NewsMax: On the subject of your "America at a Crossroads" segment for PBS: In one of your filmed confrontations with protestors on the National Mall, you tell a woman, "I'm sorry for your loss, but I'm not the president." You're saying to her that you are not the architect of the war and you didn't make the decisions. But you were a powerhouse on the Defense Policy Board.


Perle: As a matter of fact, I was not at all happy with the conduct of the board. Now people can differ about what approach would have been more effective. I think we got ourselves, unfortunately, into an occupation [of Iraq] that we could have avoided. We could have avoided it by turning things over to the Iraqis more or less immediately, which is what I was arguing for.


NewsMax: How do you see it playing out on Capitol Hill?


Perle: The House and the Democratic leadership have decided to make Iraq a partisan political issue. They are using it to rally Democrats, and it seems to me that they have lost all sight of the national interest.

NewsMax: Now that Al Franken has declared for the U.S. Senate...

Perle: ...Franken was hung up on the fact that we didn't find stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, and that whole thing gets a little tedious after a while.


The president didn't create [the intelligence organizations]. He made the mistake of keeping [former CIA chief George] Tenet in place, but that is another matter.

So, in the end, Perle is one of the key architects of the war, yets minimizes his own role - certainly after Iraq turns into one hell of a FUBAR wrapped in an enigma. And not only is he saddled with the burden of his gross mistakes, he turns around and blames BushCo for the problems.

I suppose that Perle really believes that the Iraq war - if run competently - could have turned out far better than it has. What a terrible misreading of the situation. But these kinds of misreadings are why the NeoCons are consigned to the kitty litter box of history.

Perle Status: Richard Perle is dead to George Dubya Bush.

Neocon deathwatch: Part 1

Reading the news these days is to read of the political deaths of a whole caste within the political class - the neocons.

Let's go through the list. I won't make any claims of being comprehensive, so this list will be updated semi-regularly. Send me your tips on other neocon political cadavers. I'll be sure to credit you when I add to the list.

Karl "the cat" Rove. Karl is on political death watch once again, but he previously escaped the claws of prosecutor Fitzgerald in the Plamegate case, and he may lube up and slip out once again.

The latest is Rove's deleted emails. Dan Froomkin covers the story. This is from Rove's lawyer today:

Karl Rove's lawyer on Friday dismissed the notion that President Bush's chief political adviser intentionally deleted his own e-mails from a Republican-sponsored server, saying Rove believed the communications were being preserved in accordance with the law.

Rove status: In the hospital, Doctor-induced coma.

Paul "comb-licker" Wolfowitz. Architect of the failed Bush Doctrine, and huge supporter of the Iraq War. Wolfowitz testified at the House Budget Committee on February 27, 2003:

There has been a good deal of comment - some of it quite outlandish - about what our postwar requirements might be in Iraq. Some of the higher end predictions we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq, are wildly off the mark. It is hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army - hard to imagine.

Wolfie parlayed that spectacular error that cost the US hundreds of billions of dollars, untold deaths, massive destruction, general mayhem, and the rise of a 1,000 mini-Saddams into the World Bank presidency (huh?). However, Wolfie is in trouble:

Staff at the World Bank have demanded the resignation of Paul Wolfowitz, the bank's president, after he admitted authorising large pay rises for his Libyan-born partner that took her salary to $200,000.

Wolfowitz status: In the hospital, on life support.

This series will be updated regularly.