Comment on: Jim Hoagland - Bush's Vietnam Blunder - washingtonpost.com on 8/24/2007 8:46 AM

Mr. Hoagland writes that Vietnam and Iraq are totally different situations. That may be true in all respects except the most important one: quagmire. I was a Marine in DaNang in 195-66, serving at the headquarters of the 1st Marine Air Wing. By the end of 1965, after we had dropped bombs on the area near the airbase day and night for many months, the number of 'hostiles' had doubled. Even the lowly lieutenants with whom I worked knew the war was not likely to turn out well in terms of America's geopolitical goals. We learned much later, after the publication of the Pentagon Papers and of Robert McNamara's memoir, that the nation's leaders also knew by the end of 1965 that the war was a loser. Nonetheless hundreds of thousands of additional troops were injected into the unwinnable war and thousands were killed and wounded and an unknowable number of Vietnamese were blown up, shot, burned, and poisoned by our acts. By the time the war was ended, the military was severely weakened and embarassed by the loss of the war. Worse, the country was torn apart by bitter conflict between the "America, love it or leave it" crowd and the "End the War" crowd. America was held in contempt by other nations. How can Mr. Hoagland say that Vietnam and Iraq are 'totally different'?

The president's Vietnam speech is part of a larger effort that has been going on for some time: setting up the Democrats and 'lefties' as responsible for 'losing Iraq' (as if it ever was 'ours' to lose.) As long as the neocons and talk radio wingnuts and other Republicans maintain that the war is winnable, they are in a position to blame others for the inevitable disaster that will befall Iraq when we withdraw. Many of those VFW guys (I am a life member) that Bush was talking to still insist that we 'lost' Vietnam only because of political interference with the military. Bush was simply doing his part in setting up the same spurious argument for his catastrophic Iraq misadventure which he knows is doomed to failure. What a truly terrible human being he is.

Comment on: Comments: Bush Compares Iraq to Vietnam - washingtonpost.com on 8/23/2007 12:05 AM

Back in the waning days of the Nixon regime, I vividly remember becoming angrier and angrier with Nixon as the evidence of his criminality mounted and the country, or at least its national government, became increasingly paralyzed in a constitutional crisis. I thought I would never again see the day when an American president would trigger in me the same kind of deep disgust and anger and anxiety for the future of the nation. Alas, George Walker Bush has outdone Richard Milhous Nixon.

After using his Daddy’s clout to avoid service in Vietnam (where I served as a Marine in 1965-66), he now has the shameless audacity to argue that it was a terrible mistake to pull out of that country after losing only 58,000 American lives and many multiples of that number of Vietnamese lives. Yes, he now tells us that the American government should have sent even more thousands and thousands of young conscripts to be killed or brutalized in that country while he partied in Texas and played jet jockey in the Air National Guard. When I first heard this incredible charge on a cable news program, I was reminded of Attorney Joseph Welch’s famous words directed at Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the Army hearings: "Until this moment, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. . . Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" I would ask Bush “Have you no sense of shame, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of shame?” How many more thousands of lives would you squander in Iraq rather than admit that you made a catastrophic mistake in invading and occupying that country? Once again, you live in the lap of luxury, surrounded by suckbutts while others pay the price you’ve never been willing to pay yourself or with your privileged family and buddies. You are a total disgrace, especially to your father who (1) served honorably and at risk in the war of his youth, and (2) had the wisdom to eschew toppling Saddam Hussein and occupying Iraq because doing so would lead to precisely the maelstrom his strutting chickenhawk son has brought about. You make Nixon look good. You surely must be the most disgusting president in the history of the country, as well as the most incompetent. God help the nation.

Comment on: Comments: As Democracy Push Falters, Bush Feels Like a 'Dissident' - washingtonpost.com on 8/20/2007 6:33 AM

"emainland"s comment on the first page of these comments says it all and says it best. Bravo. Failed and wholly incompetent 'democracy' and 'liberty' agenda abroad, emerging fascism at home. What a disaster Bush and Cheney and their koolaid drinking Republican supporters and venal, feckless Democratic demi-opposition have been.

Comment on: Domestic Use of Spy Satellites To Widen - washingtonpost.com on 8/16/2007 8:03 AM

Bush's chief intelligence officer for the Department of Homeland Insecurity says: "We can give total assurance" that Americans' civil liberties will be protected. 'Americans shouln't have any concerns about it." Ronald Reagan said: "The nine scariest words in the English language are 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.p" So much for real Reaganism in the Republican Party. Lord Acton, one of only a few Roman Catholic members of the English peerage, wrote in opposition to the First Vatican Council's adoption of the theory of papal infallibility: "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely." Have we learned nothing from the Hoover years at the FBI, the Church Committee's report on illegal CIA activities, the FBI's recent gross abuse of its Patriot Act power to issue 'national security letters' to obtain information without warrant, from the torture and other abuse of prisoners with BushCheney blessings, from all that has happened under the thugs running the White House and the Depatment of Justice? Oh, I forgot. We have a Bushie's 'total assurance' that our civil liberties will be protected and that 'Americans shouldn't have any concerns about it." Now I feel better.

Comment on: Comments: Harold Meyerson - Rove's Blind Spot - washingtonpost.com on 8/15/2007 9:37 AM

I have thought from early on in the Bush presidential regime that George W. Bush is profoundly stupid - not stupid in the ordinary sense of 'not too bright,' or 'a little slow on the uptake,' but stupid in the sense of having little or practical wisdom, the ability to understand life and the world and to know what needs to be done and what needs to be avoided. Practical wisdom comes from living a life full of challenges, a wide range of experiences, and a fair share of regretted mistakes. Bush's life has been highly privileged and elitist from the get-go. He was born with the metaphorical silver spoon in his mouth, or 'on third base' in the words of Ann Richards. His family ties and wealth got him into Yale notwithstanding his undistinquished academic career and his family ties and wealth and provided the means to get into the Air National Guard and to avoid service in Vietnam, to get into the oil business in West Texas and to get into professional baseball and to get into politics. It comes as no surprise therefore that Bush fails to understand the plight of millions of his countrymen who know only too well that they have little real economic security. They are at substantial risk and they are always aware of it, fearing a recession, fearing a serious injury or protracted illness, fearing a merger or acquisition that will cost them their jobs, fearing outsourcing to China, fearing decreasing employability with increasing age, and so on. It has been in this Age of Anxiety that Bush, tutored by the equally profoundly stupid Karl Rove, trotted out his Ownership Society, his Social Security privitization scheme, his fabulous tax cuts for the fabulously wealthy, his support for importing more immigrant workers and exporting more manufacturing and service jobs, and of course his trilion dollar misadventure in Iraq. Karl Rove is now appropriately identified with all of Bush's profound stupidities, his profound misreadings of the times. The effects of Bush's and Rove's profound stupidities will long outlast the Bush regime. It's hard to imagine that History's judgment of Rove will comport with Bush's judgment of "boy genius" but it will agree with his title of "Architect", but only as the architect of a structure that collapsed. A pox on both of them.

Comment on: Comments: Eugene Robinson - Just Another Vacation From Reality - washingtonpost.com on 8/10/2007 7:57 AM

I always look to see what Eugene Robinson has to say about whatever interests him to write about on any given day and today's column sure demonstrates why he is so worth reading. He cuts right through the BS, the GroupThink, the Orwellian misuse of language to get at the heart of the matter. The only problem is that when sees as clearly as Mr. Robinson does, and shares his clear vision of reality with his readers, it's scary, especially when he writes about the Decider, the Leader of the Free World, the Commander Guy. As he strips away the trappings of the White House, the pomp of the Rose Garden setting, the Marines in ceremonial dress blues, the 'Hail to the Chief' music and all that, we are left with the sight of the most powerful man in the world, the guy we elected and empowered, as a man either as delusional as Kim Jung Il or as wicked as many dictators, or as dumb as a fencepost, or some combination of the above. Let us shudder for the nation.

Comment on: Comments: Investigating Mr. Gonzales - washingtonpost.com on 8/2/2007 7:12 AM

It looks like this editorial could have been written by the chair of the Republican National Committee, or perhaps by Tony Snow, or maybe even by the Decider himself. To whom does the Inspector General of the Departmnt of Justice report? Is it not . . . the Decider? Does the Editorial Board of the Washington Post thinks that its readers are so benighted and ill-informed that they do not understand that the central impediment to obtaining information from Mr. Gonzales is Mr. Bush? that it is precisely the intimate and conspiratorial relationship between these two miscreants that empowers Mr. Gonzales in persistent attempts at deception of the American public and his contemptuous relations with both houses of the Congress? Does the Editorial Board think we have forgotten the regime's embrace of the theory of the 'unitary executive' under which the Insprector Generals of the departments and agencies of the government, and every other federal employee in the executive branch, works directly for the Decider? Bush's claimed prerogative to order the U. S. Attorney for the District of Columbia not to bring criminal contempt charges before a grand jury in the cases of Mr. Bolton and Ms. Meirs would operate as well to justify his telling the DOJ Inspector General to lay off Gonzales. In addition, he could always play the 'classified information' and 'national security ' cards with the IG. C'mon, Editorial Board, being disingenuous is one thing, treating your readers as total morons is something else. The only disciplinary process in which George W. Bush doesn't ultimately hold all the cards is impeachment. Let the games begin.

Comment on: Comments: Gonzales's Truthfulness Long Disputed - washingtonpost.com on 7/30/2007 7:30 AM

"Ita8111" and "jam754" write of the political effect of the Gonzales saga, the first suggesting that Hispanic voters will punish Democrats for 'torturing' Gonzales, the second suggesting that "ita" misunderestimates (couldn't resist it) Hispanic voters. I'm reminded of a bit that the comic genius and social critic Richard Pryor used to do in his heyday. When news broke that a terrible crime had been committed,he said, the folks in the black community would start praying 'pleeease, don't let it be a brother!" While there are surely many Hispanic supporters of Alberto Gonzales and of his Mephistopheles George Bush, there are surely many others who wish Gonzales would disappear. He is, as the old Yiddish saying goes, a 'shanda fur die goyim,' one whose shameful actions tends to bring the vulnerable minority group to which he belongs into disrepute or to provide an excuse for bigoted thinking or action within the dominant majority community. When I think of Gonzales, I think of another old Yiddish saying which translates as "May a skunk set up shop in his nose and thrive!"

Comment on: Comments: Iraqi Government Dismisses Sunni Demands - washingtonpost.com on 7/27/2007 4:28 PM

Today's NY Times has a feature story on the US's growing anger with the Saudi government (you know, those royals who are long term dear friends of the Bush family)for supporting the Sunni opponents of the feckless Maliki 'government' (it pretends to run the Green Zone). So here's a story about a large Sunni bloc threatening to pull out of the 'national unity' government supported by Decider and Commander Guy Bush. So we have the Sunnis against us, the Shiites against us, the Saudis against us, the Iranians against us, let's see, who'd I forget? Oh, yes, the Kurds love us, which potentially has the Turks against us and the Israelis (kind of) love us, which puts most Muslim nations against us. Now, George and Dick, tell me again why American sons and daughters, American mothers and fathers, American brothers and sisters and friends and neighbors should be spilling their blood in this cobbled-together excuse for a country? And have a nice weekend.

Comment on: Comments: Eugene Robinson - Bedtime for Gonzo - washingtonpost.com on 7/27/2007 1:34 PM

Let me second Mr. Robinson's wish that Gonzales gets nailed for, not to put too fine a point on it, Gonzo is a despicable human being. Look at his record on torture. Look at his record as Bush's pardon counsel in Texas, pretending to provide serious review of death sentence cases. He is a bad, bad man, a perfect accomplice for another bad, bad man, his string puller, Bush. On whether he committed perjury or not respecting the late night visit to Ashcroft's hospital room, I think he is being, as the Irish say, too clever by half. He will say that the disagreement within the administration was over the portions of the NSA program that were dropped after the threats of resignation by Ashcroft, Comey, Mueller, et al., and thus those portions were not part of the program that the President announced to the public after disclosure by the New York Times. This must be what the DOJ spokesman called Gonzales' confusing (i.e., misleading) "linquistic parsing." What a pig he is. May a skunk set up shop in his nose, and thrive. Ditto re his enabler Bush.