They're Jealous

Democrats Won't Temper Iraq Legislation:

After weeks of suggesting Democrats would temper their approach to Iraq legislation in a bid to attract more Republicans, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared abruptly Tuesday that he had no plans to do so.

The Democratic leader said he will call for a vote this month on several anti-war proposals, including one by Sen. Carl Levin that would insist President Bush end U.S. combat next summer. The proposals would be mandatory and not leave Bush wiggle room, said Reid, D-Nev.


"There (are) no goals. It's all definite timelines," he told reporters of the planned legislation.


. . .


When asked why Democrats won't soften the deadline, the majority leader said he doesn't have confidence Republicans are willing to challenge Bush on the war.


"I think they've decided definitely they want this to be the Senate Republicans' war, not just Bush's. They're jealous," he said with a smile.

The great P.R. offensive, associated with Petraeus's testimony got Bush a bump of only 2 to 3 percent in the polls, from just below 30% to just above 30%, while Democratic leaders in a supine position just made the base of the Democratic Party mad as hell.

It is time to fight. If the issue is the 2008 election, then Democrats should not be suckered into any bi-partisan cover for a disastrous Republican policy.

in the real world, things are different

Dan Froomkin:

"In the alternate universe that President Bush occupies, he gave a smashing speech . . .

"Over there, the people of Iraq need our help to save them from the al Qaeda terrorists who intend to overthrow their brave and united government on the way to attacking America. It's a battle of good versus evil. We have 36 countries fighting alongside us. And the fight is going very well indeed. Ordinary life is returning to Baghdad.

"A few more things about Bush's universe: There, the president can make things true simply by solemnly pronouncing them from the Oval Office. He can reach out to his critics just by saying he is doing so. And people believe him."

Fred Kaplan - Slate :

"President Bush's TV address tonight was the worst speech he's ever given on the war in Iraq, and that's saying a lot. Every premise, every proposal, nearly every substantive point was sheer fiction. The only question is whether he was being deceptive or delusional."

New York Times:

"Mr. Bush was clear last night — as he was when he addressed the nation in January, September of last year, the December before that and in April 2004 — that his only real plan is to confuse enough Americans and cow enough members of Congress to let him muddle along and saddle his successor with this war that should never have been started."

Crackpots Everywhere

On the eve of David Petraeus' testimony, note is taken that Rudy Giuliani is taking counsel from crackpots.

Matthew Yglesias notes the association of Rudy Giuliani with Norman Podhoretz: "something's gone badly wrong with a country where a major political figure sees associating himself with this kind of lunacy as a smart political move"

Tristero at Hullabaloo has more on "Giuliani's Unhinged Adviser"

War with Iran!

War with Iran!: "Of course I cannot verify this report."

Matthew Yglesias: my hero

I've long been frustrated by the instinctive way the Generals respond to the inadequacy of the resources that they've been assigned, by projecting a very, very long time-frame to complete their "mission".

I can't help, but notice how it plays into a stab-in-the-back narrative: the Democrats, who want to withdraw are accused of wanting to set a "surrender date", as if we can't fail until we admit failure, and the admission of failure is the cause of failure.

Matthew Yglesias, bless his little heart, steps by this narrative blockade, to re-frame the General's view.

Matthew Yglesias: "General Petraeus thinks he's making so much progress that the war will need to continue twice as long again as it's already gone on. More to the point, once you're looking at that kind of time frame, all forecasts are nonsensical. We could leave tomorrow and ten years might be plenty of time for Iraq to descend deeper into civil war, for the civil war to end, and then for stability to emerge."

And, here's the money shot: "To say that our current policy is working and needs just ten more years to stabilize Iraq is lunacy -- just leaving stands a perfectly good chance of working just as quickly at radically lower cost."

I fully expect General Petraeus will be back to projecting no more than a Friedman Unit at a time, in his testimony before Congress in September. But, if not, these projections of 10 years in Iraq are a code the Democrats can work with. And, Yglesias shows how: doing nothing is a good "long-shot" strategy for a ten-year time period, and less costly than Bush's "long-shot" strategy.

Good-bye, permanent bases.

Grasping Reality with Both Hands: Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal

Brad DeLong brings us an important message from Jonathan Chait:

It's important to understand that the Republican Party is mostly an organized conspiracy to redistribute wealth upwards, that deceit is an essential element of their M.O., that the conservative movement is fundamentally radical and dangerous, that the national media have done an abysmal job of covering politics and policy, and that the Bush administration has overturned the basic norms of governance that have prevailed for decades...

Why Mr. Chait cannot bring himself to do a better job in the pages of the execrable The New Republic than he does in e-mail is left as an exercise for the reader.

Hullabaloo

Digby at Hullabaloo takes note that the mainstream media is"catapulting the propaganda" for the Bush Administration, while ignoring the very powerful op-ed, The War as We Saw It - New York Times, which appeared in Sunday's New York Times, by seven non-coms, who know whereof they speak.

Many bloggers noted this extremely powerful op-ed. It isn't just that the non-coms are questioning the War and the Surge and the whole Bush "strategy" -- it is that the non-coms are speaking sense.

The mainstream media have failed as a filter and a discriminator, in ways that have had profound consequences for the U.S. and the world. They (meaning the likes of Jim Lehrer, Wolf Blitzer and Tim Russert, among others) simply do not seem capable of correctly and sensibly sorting out, who is rational, truthful, benign, well-informed from those who are hacks and fools.

By and large, the mainstream media broadcast and write what they are told, no matter how deceptive or foolish. There are exceptions, but they simply serve to highlight the extensive dysfunction in place.

But, people are noticing. People read a great piece, and the great piece doesn't make news. And, people notice the Media is broken.

Maybe, there's a bit of progress underway.