Middle East
mikethemadbiologist | November 30, 2006Not predictable. Predicted. Over at DailyKos is a powerful diary by the wife of a Vietnam & Iraq I war veteran. During a discussion with a bunch of conservative college students, the following happened (italics mine):
A little blonde got up enough nerve to say something. My husband wouldn't tell me exactly what she said, but I can picture it. My nieces, Thing 1 and Thing 2, are fairly typical college students. They back Bush 110% because he's the president and a Christian and God chose him to be president instead of that arrogant Al Gore or that CATHOLIC LIBERAL John Kerry ( cps…
mikethemadbiologist | November 3, 2006Buckling under to conservative pressure to find the non-existent evidence that Saddam Hussein had, in fact, been building weapons of mass destruction, about a year ago, the Bush Administration placed online documents from the Saddam Hussein era that provided technical information on building various nuclear devices. Quoth the Grey Lady:
The campaign for the online archive was mounted by conservative publications and politicians, who said that the nation's spy agencies had failed adequately to analyze the 48,000 boxes of documents seized since the March 2003 invasion. With the public…
mikethemadbiologist | October 21, 2006
...and Donald Rumsfeld? From the AP:
"He [Rumsfeld] leads in a way that the good Lord tells him is best for our country," said Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Ordinarily, I would simply think that this is more Republican cynicism about religion, but I'm not so sure.
Why? Because crazy-ass religiosity has been observed elsewhere:
1) At the Air Force Academy, cadets were subject to illegal prosleytizing by USAF chaplains (for more updates, check out the Military Religious Freedom Foundation blog).
2) The idiocy about atheism uttered by Pat Tillman's…
mikethemadbiologist | September 28, 2006
This transcends absurd: Republican Rep. John Boehner, the House Majority Leader, stated on national television that Al-Queda and Saddam Hussein were linked, even though President Bush himself has admitted no connection. Keep in mind, Boehner isn't some councilman in a podunk little town. He is one of the most influential members of Congress. And he is utterly delusional. On behalf of the Coalition of the Sane, I ask, can we please have our country back?
mikethemadbiologist | September 26, 2006What should be the cover story of a major news magazine: the resurgence of the Taliban, or a biography of photographer Annie Leibowitz? Well, if you're the powers that be at Newsweek, you decide that the resurgence of the Taliban is more important, except for U.S. readers. We get Leibowitz.
Gutless.
A completely unrelated aside: Our Benevolent Seed Overlords want a picture of the Mad Biologist for their own nefarious purposes. So I ask you: what do you think a Mad Biologist would look like? Click here to offer your opinions.
mikethemadbiologist | September 19, 2006Let me state something very clearly: I do not want a U.S. city (or any other city for that matter) wiped out by a nuclear bomb. Having said that, we the hawks among us have lost all sense of historical perspective when it comes to Iran. When you compare the Cold War to what ever it is that we have going on with Iran, it's obvious that the existential threat of Iran isn't even in the same league:
1) Had only a fraction of the nuclear arsenals on either side been unleashed, human civilization would probably come to a screeching halt (to think, no internets!).
2) Leaving aside the nutjobs on…
mikethemadbiologist | September 19, 2006Retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner seems to think so:
Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner (Ret.) said, "We are conducting military operations inside Iran right now. The evidence is overwhelming."
Gardiner, who taught at the U.S. Army's National War College, has previously suggested that U.S. forces were already on the ground in Iran. Today he added several additional new points:
1) The House Committee on Emerging Threats recently called on State and Defense Department officials to testify on whether U.S. forces were in Iran. The officials didn't come to the hearing.
2) "We have learned from Time…
mikethemadbiologist | September 16, 2006After reading this Washington Post article about the Iraq War reconstruction effort, I've stumbled across the epitaph of the Bush Administration:
Bush Administration appoints political cronies and ideological wackjobs to important positions. Said appointees pandimensionally clusterfuck everything sideways. People suffer and die due to avoidable ineptitude.
Let's document the idiocies.
Jim O'Beirne was the gatekeeper for hiring in the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). Because most of these jobs were classified as temporary, provisional jobs, they were exempt from the federal…
mikethemadbiologist | September 14, 2006With all the Neville Chamberlain talk flying around, the neocons are right about one thing: there has been too much appeasement. Appeasement of Bush, that is. tristero writes about the rattling of sabers--and nukes--at Iran (boldface mine):
As for Iran, let me explain: YOU may think it's highly unlikely - the famous 1% probability, as a commenter mentioned - that Bush won't use nukes and is setting us up for conventional warfare. That is because you are sane and sensible. But the Bush administration thinks it's very likely. Hersh is alarmingly clear that there was close to a mutiny at…
mikethemadbiologist | September 13, 2006Granted, I've supported Paul Waldman's thesis that politics revolves around a personal narrative and not logical discussions of policy analysis is the right way to view things--depressing as that is. But after reading this post by Kos, I'm thoroughly discouraged. Kos writes:
The key is to find that negative value, and base the entire campaign to define the opponent around it. Then, every single issue that arises can be neatly slotted into that value, reinforcing it in the media and the voters' minds.
I think he might be right, but how the hell did we as a people get so collectively stupid…
mikethemadbiologist | September 5, 2006Or as Lovecraft would have put it:
Aaaiii! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Iran R'lyeh wagn'nagl fhtagn! Aaaiii!!!!
Fareed Zakaria sums up the silliness of comparing Iran to Nazi Germany:
Can everyone please take a deep breath?
To review a bit of history: in 1938, Adolf Hitler launched what became a world war not merely because he was evil but because he was in complete control of the strongest country on the planet. At the time, Germany had the world's second largest industrial base and its mightiest army. (The American economy was bigger, but in 1938 its army was smaller than that of Finland.) This is…
mikethemadbiologist | September 5, 2006In a move to outsource and privatize everything in the federal government, ABC has formed a private-public partnership with the Bush Administration to spew Republican propaganda (it's bad enough when the Republicans do it on the taxpayer's dime). John Aravosis writes:
Good God, and they're sending a copy of the film and a letter to 100,000 American high school teachers written by - who? - the REPUBLICAN chair of the 9/11 Commission. Not the Democrat and the Republican, just the Republican. And a Republican whose son is running for the US Senate seat in New Jersey - oh yeah, no conflict…
mikethemadbiologist | September 1, 2006
Here's what the mayor of Salt Lake City, UT said yesterday. You would think he's one of those Northeast liberal elitist, latte-drinkin' types...
Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Jackson:
A patriot is a person who loves his or her country.
Who among you loves your country so much that you have come here today to raise your voice out of deep concern for our nation - and for our world?
And who among you loves your country so much that you insist that our nation's leaders tell us the truth?
Let's hear it: "Give us the truth! Give us the truth! Give us the truth!"
Let no one deny we are patriots. We…
mikethemadbiologist | August 31, 2006
A Republican political operative about to give the First Amendment a rectal exam
(photo from here)
...well, not exactly. From the BBC comes this heartwarming story of fear of everything Arab (italics mine):
Raed Jarrar said security officials warned him his clothing was offensive after he checked in for a JetBlue flight to California on 12 August.
Mr Jarrar said he was shocked such an action could be taken in the US.
US transport officials are conducting an inquiry after a complaint from the US Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
JetBlue said it was also investigating the incident but a…
mikethemadbiologist | August 22, 2006
(Michael Barone guarding his glass house from the Elitofacist hordes; photo from here)
...because you never know where they'll show up.
Conservative pundit Michael Barone writes about those who oppose the failed Bush Iraq policies (italics mine):
We have always had our covert enemies, but their numbers were few until the 1960s. But then the elite young men who declined to serve in the military during the Vietnam War set out to write a narrative in which they, rather than those who obeyed the call to duty, were the heroes. They have propagated their ideas through the universities, the…
mikethemadbiologist | August 20, 2006Frank Rich in the NY Times has a good analysis of the Lamont primary victory in CT, although I think he downplays what it means for the Democratic Party. Rich writes:
The hyperbole that has greeted the Lamont victory in some quarters is far more revealing than the victory itself. In 2006, the tired Rove strategy of equating any Democratic politician's opposition to the Iraq war with cut-and-run defeatism in the war on terror looks desperate. The Republicans are protesting too much, methinks. A former Greenwich selectman like Mr. Lamont isn't easily slimed as a reincarnation of Abbie Hoffman…
mikethemadbiologist | August 19, 2006If there is one post about the recent Lebanon fiasco worth reading, it's Doron Rosenblum's "Not Sparta--and Just As Well" Rosenblum writes:
But to both those who send us into battle in order to derive joy from our performance, and those among us who are thoroughly depressed by the results of the war, it must be said: Comfort, comfort, my people. With all the acute importance of military might, Israel cannot be solely a derivative of victories or tactical defeats on the battlefield. Its existence is far richer and far more meaningful and varied than that.
If the Israeli mentality is "inferior…
mikethemadbiologist | August 17, 2006Max, over at MaxSpeak, You Listen, is divulging top sekrit information. You would think he was a White House Staffer or something...
mikethemadbiologist | August 16, 2006
Juan Cole nails it:
It was such a stupid war. It was thick-as-two-blocks-of-wood strategy on all sides. It was moronic for the Israelis to plan it out last year. It was idiotic for Hizbullah to cross over into Israel, kill soldiers, and take two captive. It was brain dead for the Israeli officer corps and politicians to think they could get anything positive out of bombing Lebanon back to the stone age and making a million people homeless. It was dim-witted for Hasan Nasrallah to threaten Israelis with releasing poison gases from Haifa chemical plants on them. It was obtuse for the Israelis…
mikethemadbiologist | August 13, 2006At this point, one has to wonder if there are any sane people left in the Bush Administration. In the New Yorker, Sy Hersh describes the run up to the next war:
A former intelligence officer said, "We told Israel, 'Look, if you guys have to go, we're behind you all the way. But we think it should be sooner rather than later--the longer you wait, the less time we [the U.S.] have to evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office.' "
And regarding intelligence, it's the same old song:
The Pentagon consultant told me that intelligence about Hezbollah and Iran is being mishandled by…