RelentlesslyOptimistic

Because Their Lips Are Moving Special: At least 935 official lies to justify the war

The Center for Public Integrity, a non-partisan non-profit that produces responsible investigative journalism, released The War Card: Orchestrated Deception on the Path To War that concluded that:

"President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq."

And

"...the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq"

As a part of preparing the study the Center produced, and has made available on their web site, a 380,000 word database of the statements made by top Bush administration officials that enabled comparisons between what they said and what they actually knew according to official documents and statements.

Via Mark Morford, photo from Political-News.org

Blackwater contractor conducts State Department's investigation of Blackwater incident. The conclusion: Blackwater did nothing wrong.

Talking Points Memo on the investigation of the Blackwater incident in Iraq:

"A few days ago the State Department released what it called a "first blush" report on the Blackwater incident in Baghdad, a report which largely exonerated the Blackwater personnel involved.

I noted at the time that "first blush" was something of an understatement since the report was based exclusively on statements the State Department took from Blackwater operatives on the scene. In other words, the Blackwater employees who did the shooting gave State an account that largely exonerated themselves. A truly shocking development.

But it seems that I was behind the curve on the level of caricature and self-parody that is the military contracting biz in Iraq these days.

The report was written out of the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the folks who hired Blackwater to provide security for US diplomats in Iraq. But it turns out that the State Department employee who interviewed the Blackwater folks and wrote the report, Darren Hanner ... well, he wasn't a State Department employee. He was another contractor from Blackwater.

So yes, you've got that right. We've now reached what can only be called the alpha and the omega of contracting accountability breakdown ridiculousness. We're outsourcing our investigations of Blackwater to Blackwater."

Via For Your Entertainment. Image ABC News

Armed Forces recruitment standards

Click to see larger. From skatemoss.

"Stay the Course" doesn't actually mean "Stay the Course"

The latest "Because their lips are moving" from President Bush:

June: "I saw people wondering whether the United States would have the nerve to stay the course and help them succeed," he said after returning from Baghdad

July: "We will win in Iraq so long as we stay the course"

August: We will stay the course. We will help this young Iraqi democracy succeed"

October 11: "The characterization of, you know, 'it's stay the course' is about a quarter right," Bush complained"

Last week: "Listen, we've never been stay the course, George," he told George Stephanopoulos of ABC News.

Media Matters notes that neither CBS nor AP challenged White House senior adviser Dan Bartlett's statement that the Administration's policy has "never been a 'stay the course' strategy."

From washingtonpost.com, photo Yahoo News

Because their lips are moving: Fox News on Iraq

In an "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" kind of way, this was lifted entirely from Sisyphus Shrugged, in part because of the terrific title:

Oceana has or has not always been at war with itself

Sisyphus notes that these are presented in the order in which Fox broadcast them.

What if Congress had opposed Vietnam sooner?

Despite denials from the right, the Iraqi Quagmire resembles Vietnam in many ways, not the least of which is the response by the pro-war leadership to criticism. What if someone in Congress had had the courage to call for immediate withdrawal from Vietnam sooner? How would history have changed, how many more would have lived if we hadn't had to endure the endless peace talks seeking "peace with honor?"

Yesterday Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), a decorated Vietnam veteran and long-respected hawk (even Fox News calls him "one of Congress' most hawkish Democrats"), introduced a resolution that ignited Congress. As Dana Milbank at the Washington Post said:

"In his 37 years in the military, John Murtha won two Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star with a Combat "V," and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. As a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania for the past 31 years, he has been a fierce hawk, championing conflicts in Central America and the Persian Gulf.
Yesterday, he was called a coward."
[...]
Murtha, whose brand of hawkishness has never been qualified by the word "chicken," was expecting the attacks. "I like guys who've never been there to criticize us who've been there. I like that," the burly old Marine said, hands in pocket. Referring to Vice President Cheney, he continued: "I like guys who got five deferments and never been there, and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done."

Congressional Republicans submitted a weaker resolution that they sleazily also called the "Murtha Resolution," to replace the one Murtha championed. The gutted resolution failed after all Democrats and five Republicans voted against it. During the pre-vote debate, Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH) quoted as a constituent a former Marine and current Ohio State House Republican who sent a message to Murtha "that cowards cut and run, Marines never do." Think Progress reported (and has the video):

"Schmidt was later forced to return to the House floor and have her remarks stricken from the record. Despite having said the purpose of her “coward” statement was to “send Congressman Murtha a message,” Schmidt claimed:
"Mr. Speaker, my remarks were not directed to any member of the House and I did not intend to suggest they applied to any member, most especially the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania."

To translate from the Orwellian, I didn't say what I said and I didn't mean it anyway. GOP leaders also floated the idea of launching an ethics probe of Murtha.

Meanwhile, right-wing NewsBusters ("exposing and combating liberal media bias") used a misleading headline "Media Ignore Congressman Murtha’s Long History Of Opposition to the Iraq War" to muddy the waters around Murtha's positions on the Iraq war. Their story does report (as if it was a bad thing) that "Rep. Murtha has been expressing disgust with the Bush administration’s prosecution of this war since six months after it started."

So let me see if I understand: after initially voting for the war, a 37-year, decorated Marine later claims that the Administration's postwar planning was incompetent and that intelligence was manipulated. Somehow this fact is supposed to discredit his current position that the justification for war was based on manipulated intelligence, the war planning was incompetent, and that as a result the only sensible course left to us is immediate withdrawal. And the media ignoring this previous opposition is a liberal-media plot to destroy America. Maybe they've been talking to poor Bill O'Reilly.

Because his lips are moving, part II

Bush Contends Partisan Critics Hurt War Effort
Bush celebrates Veterans Day by claiming that questioning the President is unpatriotic. That's why we have people dying to preserve our freedom of speech! The money quote:

"The stakes in the global war on terror are too high, and the national interest is too important, for politicians to throw out false charges," Mr. Bush said.

Do you suppose he'll stop, then?

A (continued) history of the Iraq war, told entirely in lies

Harpers.org re-posts this October 2003 piece quoting Bush Administration statements about the Iraq war on the same day that the AP quoted Bush:

"We do not torture," Bush declared in response to reports of secret CIA prisons overseas.
President Bush on Monday defended U.S. interrogation practices...[as he] supported an effort...to block or modify a proposed Senate-passed ban on torture.

Photo from Bob Harris

Public support for Iraqi reconstruction?

According to The Observer an appeal to Americans (and others, I suppose) to donate money to assist in the reconstruction of Iraq has raised a total of six hundred dollars ($600) [actually $540 - see below] since it was launched September 9th.

"The public's reluctance to contribute much more than the cost of two iPods to the administration's attempt to offer citizens 'a further stake in building a free and prosperous Iraq' has been seized on by critics as evidence of growing ambivalence over that country."

Huh. Perhaps, since aid for the poor after Katrina "is working very well for them," Iraqi war supporters should be hit up to donate to rebuild the destruction we created there. Operation Green Elephant, anyone? Click on the logo above to add your donation to the $30 billion in tax dollars already appropriated to Iraqi reconstruction.

USaid's Heather Layman denied it was disappointed with the meagre sum raised after a fortnight. 'Every little helps,' she said...Layman [also] said: 'There is no financial goal. People are looking for a way to help rebuild Iraq and this is a way to facilitate that.'

USAid does not provide email addresses from their website, so I used their contact form to ask for the total number of donations to the effort, and what the cost was for the relationship with GlobalGiving, which is processing the donations made at the iraqpartnership.org website. GlobalGiving's site [it is a 501(c)3 even though the address is a .com] says that "we retain a 10% transaction fee on all donations."

George Bush: Promoting Democracy Theocracy at home and abroad

We've seen the reasons for the Iraqi war change repeatedly over time, as WMD's, terrorist flypaper and violent extremism all took center stage for a time. Now the Iraqi's are about to approve a constitution that includes the recognition of Islam as being above the rule of law. While many right-wing Christians would like to see the same sort of provision in our constitution, many Iraqi's are asking in vain for American help in preventing the enshrining of Islam in the constitution that the Americans have been pushing them to create.

In fact, the American leaders in Iraq are pushing those opposed to Islam's inclusion to compromise, in order to get a constitution, any constitution, by their self-imposed deadline. The Islamist constitution would effectively deny to women many of the rights they had under the reign of Saddam Hussein.

As Digby and Majikethis and some of  the conservatives at National Review have pointed out, it's hard to imagine that anyone would have supported this war if they knew that Americans were giving their lives in Iraq not to fight terrorism, but to establish an Islamic government equivalent to the Taliban we removed from power in Afghanistan.

Photo from the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), where it is one of the less-disturbing photos of life under the Taliban.