Instahoglets 20th Feb. 06

+++ Lying Bastard Fatigue at critical levels countrywide ++ Dick Cheney the new Typhoid Mary for this disease ++ send more snark urgently +++

"To slow its rising medical expenses, the Pentagon wants to triple the insurance premiums for its 3 million military retirees and their families...The plan was tucked away amid the billions for new jet fighters and warships that the Pentagon requested this week in its proposed budget for the fiscal year that will begin Oct. 1."

You know, that one doesn't need any extra snark - it speaks volumes about supporting the troops the GOP way all on its own.

The recently retired general counsel of the Navy repeatedly challenged the Bush administration's policy on the coercive interrogation of terror suspects, arguing that such practices violated the law, verged on torture and could ultimately expose senior officials to prosecution, according to a memorandum he wrote back in July 2004.

More and more very senior whistleblowers are coming forward with nasty truths about Bush's team of little leaguers. Someone should keep a list of them all and their revelations, a "whistleblowercentral.com", otherwise each will be counterspun piecemeal. Are we really expected to believe that every single one is mentally unstable and making things up because they have a grudge against the Presididn't?

Yet another sad old ex-Saddam general who was in no position to know what really happened in 2002 has come forward with a story about Saddam's WMD being moved to Syria. No dates or methods or names of witnesses, though.

Hang on...here's another neocon stooge only this one says the Russians moved them to Syria! By truck and ship no less, and in 2003. That contradicts evangelist wingnut Bill Tierney's story and also the fabrications of Georges Sada. As Oilver Willis says in a great debunk of Tierney et al, "when the facts don’t line up with the rhetoric, you change the facts".

The trouble is, they've changed the facts so many times they can't keep the lies in line anymore...like 12 year olds getting caught not doing their homework.

Some are waking up and smelling the coffee, after following a bunch of sociopaths with the mental ages of kids for lo these many years. Chief among them is one of the original doyens of neocon thought, Francis Fukayama. He has an essay today at the NY Times, in which we sprints rather than walks away from the neocon ideology, that is a must read for anyone invovled in politics anywhere in the world during the reign of Mad King George.

Neoconservatism, whatever its complex roots, has become indelibly associated with concepts like coercive regime change, unilateralism and American hegemony. What is needed now are new ideas, neither neoconservative nor realist, for how America is to relate to the rest of the world — ideas that retain the neoconservative belief in the universality of human rights, but without its illusions about the efficacy of American power and hegemony to bring these ends about.

This from a man who was a signator to the Statement of Principles from The Project For The New American Century back in 1997!

Andrew Sullivan follows up with his own version of Fukayama's mea cupla in fine style, saying that the neocons made three big mistakes: "to over-estimate the competence of government" (I think he means Bush's government since that's the only neocon government we have right now), "narcissism" in believing the 'manifest destiny by force' crapola that Bush is still spouting and "not taking culture seriously enough" by which he means the idiocy of being sceptical about "government's ability to change culture at home and its naivete when it comes to complex, tribal, sectarian and un-Western cultures, like Iraq's, abroad".

He ends: The correct response to this is not more triumphalism and spin, but a real sense of shame and sorrow that so many have died because of errors made by their superiors, and by intellectuals like me. Well said.

According to the prestigious Jane's Defence Weekly, "Hizbullah's exclusive dominance of southern Lebanon has been interrupted in recent weeks by what appears to be an attempt by Al-Qaeda to establish a foothold in the country."

Can we now finally have enough of idiots like Victor Davis Hanson linking Iran to Al Qaida?

Although Shiite Hizbullah has very good relations with Sunni organisations, such as the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, it perceives Al-Zarqawi's organisation, which so far has killed hundreds of Shiites in Iraq, as a threat. "We do not have any relationship with that group. They are working toward tearing the Islamic Nation apart, dividing Muslims into numerous sects and mutilating the face of Islam," Afif Naboulsi, Hizbullah's director of media relations, told the Lebanese Daily Star.

Iran, which seems to be one of Hizbullah's primary backers, is run by a Shiite theocracy. Clear enough for the wingnuts, do you think?

The excellent Tom Engelhart on the four huge super-bases of a highly permanent nature that the Pentagon has in Iraq (hat tip - Kevin Drum):

Unfortunately, there's a problem here. American reporters adhere to a simple rule: The words "permanent," "bases," and "Iraq" should never be placed in the same sentence, not even in the same paragraph; in fact, not even in the same news report.

Lastly, a breaking development that is worrying as hell - the Iraqi province of Karbala has suspended contact with US forces "over the behavior of soldiers during a visit to the governor's office two days ago".

According to the report, the decision followed similar moves by leaders of Maysan and Basra provinces, which have frozen ties with British forces in southern Iraq. It continues: "The Karbala council is controlled by the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the country's largest Shiite party, and Dawa, the party of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari." I believe Maysan and Basra are similiarly controlled.

Oh shit.