Instahoglets 26th Mar. 06

Let's start with an op-ed that echoes my own thoughts exactly.

President Bush's current campaign to build up support for an attack on Iran reminds me of the WWII-era song I've Heard That Song Before, as we experience a repeat of the propaganda trail that led us into the Iraq invasion three years ago.

This week's "DUH" moment - the US ambassador to Iraq has finally figured out it might be an idea to crack down on militias. Trouble is, the time to do that was last year or even earlier - before Iraqi powerbrokers realised they needed their personal militias to stay safe during the civil war and made them an integral part of their ministries. Rightwing "heretic" military experts like William Lind (and Lefties like me) were saying this over a year ago but the neocons ignored them. More of the same-old incompetence, in other words.

Meanwhile the head of the U.S. Iraq Reconstruction Management Office told Iraqis they are on their own - no more reconstruction money from BushCo. Typical...half-assed, incompetent, corrupt and change the goalposts when no-one's looking.

Retired Command Sergeant Major Eric Haney is one of the founders of the elite Delta Force. His assessment?

Utter debacle. But it had to be from the very first. The reasons were wrong. The reasons of this administration for taking this nation to war were not what they stated. (Army Gen.) Tommy Franks was brow-beaten and ... pursued warfare that he knew strategically was wrong in the long term. That's why he retired immediately afterward. His own staff could tell him what was going to happen afterward.

We have fomented civil war in Iraq. We have probably fomented internecine war in the Muslim world between the Shias and the Sunnis, and I think Bush may well have started the third world war, all for their own personal policies.

When Republicans say they want to protect the family, they mean their own "Family" in the mafiosa sense. The Washington Post has some deep detail on how a "top adviser to former House Whip Tom DeLay received more than a third of all the money collected by the U.S. Family Network, a nonprofit organization the adviser created to promote a pro-family political agenda in Congress." DeLay's former chief of staff, Edwin A. Buckham and his wife received a total of $1,022,729 says the WaPo. There's far more, all of it an astonishing account of graft and corruption. Of course, Jack Abramoff is involved too.

More Republican "Family" values - Dubya's Uncle Bucky up to his neck in a securities scam involving a failed contract and insiders selling shares while keeping the news of said contract from being released for months.

I can think of few articles I have read over the past six months that scared me more than this one from Jason Wiles in the Arkansas Times, wherein he tells of the way that the American Taliban are pressuring educators to teach only the Christian Right's agenda.

“I am instructed NOT to use hard numbers when telling kids how old rocks are. I am supposed to say that these rocks are VERY VERY OLD ... but I am NOT to say that these rocks are thought to be about 300 million years old.”

WTF???

Glenn Greenwald, as always, does sterling work in the service of liberty as he looks at Bush's belief that he "has and intends to preserve the power to do whatever he wants regardless of what...laws provide". (Hat Tip, Kat)

John at AmericaBlog compares the loonies of Left and Right and concludes:

Across the board, conservatives are represented by people who are simply motivated by, and exude, an irrational hatred and anger. Is it any wonder that Republicans are so prone to striking out domestically and internationally at whomever they perceive as today's enemy?

Heh. Indeed.