Divinest Sense

Not to be, like, insulting to my readers and their associates, but why is everyone so naive and dimwitted? Here’s an article by the Truthout folks about a wild and crazy claim that the U.S. created the monster that is al-Zarqawi by inflating his mythos and using him to make up a nonexistent connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda. This in turn, claims the crazy report, gave al-Zarqawi unprecented perceived power and influence. Combine this with the Jesus-ordained flattening and gassing of Iraq’s cities by our noble land, which for some reason created a motive for Iraqis to fight back. Now they knew who to call.

Um, DUHHHH, of COURSE we made this happen. Doesn’t anyone pay attention anymore? I thought this was the thing that we all knew to be true, but were just being polite and not mentioning it. I remember groaning when I read in the Post a year or more ago that al-Zarqawi was named (in a lovely red-carpet awards show, I’m sure) official leader of a new group called “Al-Qaeda in Iraq”. I turned to the person on the metro next to me and said, “I’ll bet you a hundred bucks that they spin this to sound like the group existed this whole time and we just now successfully uncovered it. Mission Accomplished!” She replied, “don’t talk to me, crazy stranger on the metro.” But I was right. And I’m still right.

When you start to give them the benefit of the doubt, you may think you’re being civil, but you’re just being retarded. Same goes for all the people who said, “aw, Roberts seems like a nice guy, he won’t be an extremist.” *Thwap thwap thwap* - don’t be an idiot!

I don’t care to be diplomatic about this stuff anymore. And neither should you. When you see stupidity, amnesia, and outright lying coming from our mass media and our president’s administration, say to as many people as will listen, “gosh, isn’t that completely UNTRUE? I seem to recall them saying exactly the OPPOSITE last week! Jeepers!” If you make sure to floss every day, wear clean clothes, and smile, they probably won’t pull out the pepper spray. It’s worth a try.

Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus wrote this article in today’s Post, making a bold attempt (for this paper) to cut through the latest chorus of bleating by the right-wing noise machine. There are a lot of obvious gaps in the administration’s current assertions that they had the same pre-Iraq intelligence that Congress did, and that an independent commission found that the intelligence was not purposely faked by intelligence agencies. What the commission did not cover, of course, was what the administration chose to do with the intelligence they received–intelligence that was far more in-depth than what was provided to Congress. Will the mainstream media keep up this suprisingly saucy behavior, or will they bend over once again?

Note to Congress: Read more than just the executive summary next time.
Note to CIA et al.: Write a better executive summary next time. Thank you.

Last night’s Daily Show interview made me get my ass up off the couch and applaud. Not quite as much of a coup as Jon Stewart’s appearance on Crossfire, but his interview with Hitchens did culminate in a rather articulate, passionate, and beautifully logical smackdown. Ding ding ding! We have a winner!

Video here, for the time being.

The Palm Beach Post is maintaining an interactive map of the hometowns of service members killed in the Iraq war. There’s no single state in America–red or blue–that hasn’t suffered senseless losses from this war.

Cindy Sheehan’s quiet sit-in outside Bush’s Crawford ranch is percolating up through the Mainstream Media. Finally, something to give real momentum to the growing anti-invasion movement. I can’t wait to see how Bush weasels out of this one.

I find myself thinking back on John Kerry’s 1971 question - “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”