Carole O'Leary and Eric Davis Are too Cowardly to Be Shrill

Cowardly academic watch: Carole O'Leary and Eric Davis department:

Bush Said to Be Frustrated by Level of Public Support in Iraq - New York Times: President Bush made clear in a private meeting this week that he was concerned about the lack of progress in Iraq and frustrated that the new Iraqi government -- and the Iraqi people -- had not shown greater public support for the American mission, participants in the meeting said Tuesday.... [T]he president expressed frustration that Iraqis had not come to appreciate the sacrifices the United States had made in Iraq, and was puzzled as to how a recent anti-American rally in support of Hezbollah in Baghdad could draw such a large crowd. "I do think he was frustrated about why 10,000 Shiites would go into the streets and demonstrate against the United States," said another person who attended....

[P]articipant[s]... Carole A. O'Leary, a professor at American University ... Eric Davis, a Rutgers University political science professor.... [N]one of the academics openly criticized Bush administration policy...

We are so s---ed.

Joe Klein Is Shrill!

Our daily prayers for the conversion to shrillness, fairness, and reality based-ness of Joe Klein have been answered!

Great Old One Digby is on the case:

Hullabaloo: One Toe In The Waterby: digby: A lot of people are going to take issue with Joe Klein for this week's column about the Connecticut race, and with good reason. (Armando does so, here.) But I am not going to join that party. I have been very hard on Klein for years for his anachronistic political analysis, but I am sensing that something has changed and I think it's worth recognizing.

Setting aside his weak defense of triangulation as a governing strategy and his misplaced hope that after all the excitement of these last few years the political system will settle down into a nice bipartisan era of good feelings if the Democrats don't go off the deep end (tell it to Dobson, Limbaugh and Kristol, Joe), I think his piece is actually amazingly right-on in some important respects. He seems to have had an epiphany recently and finally figured out how we got to where we are, if not how to get out of it.

Since Klein is a major voice of the insider conventional wisdom, I think we are making progress. Forget all the silliness he writes about "blognuts" and and his predictable he said/she said rendition of the post Lamont challenges to both parties and get a load of this:

Much was made of Cheney's venting, and it is a bit too easy, after six years of this bilge, to dwell on the Vice President's aura and miss the essential felony of the Bush White House--that it has tried to run a war without bipartisan support. Indeed, it has often attempted to use the war for partisan gain. To be sure, there is some grist to the Republican portrayal of Democrats as a bunch of wimpy peaceniks. All too often in the post-Vietnam past--the first Gulf War, for example--the default position of the Democratic Party has been to assume that any prospective use of U.S. military power would be immoral.

But Bush's initial post-9/11 response was not one of those times. The invasion of Afghanistan and an aggressive effort to destroy al-Qaeda were supported by just about every Democratic politician. Many leading Democrats even gave Bush the authority to invade Iraq, although most did so, I suspect, for reasons of political expediency. One of the most convincing arguments offered by the bloggers is that the Democratic establishment should have been far more skeptical than it was about a pre-emptive, nearly unilateral assault on an Islamic country.

In 2004 Bush and Karl Rove managed to flummox the Democrats by conflating the war in Iraq with the war against al-Qaeda and insisting that any Democratic reservations about Iraq were a sign of weakness. This was infuriating. It was Bush's disastrous decision to go to war--and worse, to go to war with insufficient resources--that transformed Iraq into a terrorist Valhalla. It is Bush's feckless prosecution of the war that has created the current morass, in which a U.S. military withdrawal could lead to a regional conflagration.

Rove may avert another electoral embarrassment this November with the same old demagoguery, but his strategy has betrayed the nation's best interests. It has destroyed any chance of a unified U.S. response to a crisis overseas. Even the Wall Street Journal's quasi-wingnut [quasi???? --- ed] editorial page cautioned, in the midst of a typical anti-Democratic harrumph, "[No] President can maintain a war for long without any support from the opposition party; sooner or later his own party will begin to crack as well."

British Right-Wing Thatcher Acolyte Max Hastings Is Shrill

From Newshog:

NewsHog: "He who has one enemy will meet him everywhere": Max Hastings is a veteran British journalist who writes for the rightwing Daily Mail (that's Brit rightwing - a lot saner than the US rabid version) but also contributes a provocative op-ed column for the Guardian. Hastings is a colourful character and about as Tory as the come. That's why I was pleasantly surprised by his Guardian column today. It's comprehensive roasting of Bush's rhetoric of "either for us or against us" and belief in a worldwide Islamist conspiracy. You have to read it all, but here's a whet for your appetite:

George Bush sometimes sounds more like the Mahdi, preaching jihad against infidels, than the leader of a western democracy. In his regular radio address to the American people on Saturday he linked the British alleged aircraft plotters with Hizbullah in Lebanon, and these in turn with the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

All, said the president of the world's most powerful nation, share a "totalitarian ideology", and a desire to "establish a safe haven from which to attack free nations". Bush's remarks put me in mind of a proverb attributed to Ali ibn Abu Talib: "He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, and he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere."

In the United States a disturbingly large minority of people - polls suggest around 40% - remain willing to accept Bush's assertions that Americans and their allies, which chiefly means the British, are faced with a single global conspiracy by Islamic fundamentalists to destroy our societies.

In less credulous Britain one could nowadays fit into an old-fashioned telephone box those who believe anything Bush or Tony Blair says about foreign policy. Many of us are consumed with frustration. We know that we face a real threat from Muslim fundamentalists, and that we are unlikely to begin to defeat this until we see it for what it is: something infinitely more complex, diffuse and nuanced than the US president wishes to suppose.

And more, as he cuts to the quick of the neocon's amateurish "framing" in pursuit of power rather than actual success in the "long war":

The madness of Bush's policy is that he has made a wilful choice to amalgamate the grossly irrational, totalitarian and homicidal objectives of al-Qaida with the just claims of Palestinians and grievances of Iraqis. His remarks on Saturday invite Muslims who sympathise with Hamas or reject Iraq's occupation or merely aspire to grow opium in Afghanistan to make common cause with Bin Laden.

If the United States insists upon regarding all Muslim opponents of its foreign policies as a homogeneous enemy then that is what they become. The Muslim radicals' "single narrative" portrays the entire course of history as a Christian and Jewish plot against Islam.

It is widely agreed among western governments and intelligence agencies that, in order to defeat the pernicious spread of such nonsense, a convincing counter-narrative is needed. Yet it becomes a trifle difficult to compose this when the US president promulgates his own single narrative, almost as ridiculous as that of al-Qaida.

And finally, the coup-de-grace on the whole failed neocon adventure and on the leaders who have championed it to the world - Bush and Blair:

Tony Blair - "waist deep in the big muddy", as Pete Seeger used to sing about Lyndon Johnson in the Vietnam era - clings to a messianic conviction that he must continue to endorse American statements and policies to maintain his restraining influence on George Bush. This invites speculation about what the president might do if Tony was not at his elbow. Seize Mecca?The west faces a threat from violent Muslim fundamentalists that would have existed even if a Lincoln had been presiding at the White House. As a citizen, I am willing to be resolute in the face of terrorism, which must be defeated. I become much less happy about the prospect of immolation, however, when Bush and Blair translate what should be an ironclad case for civilised values into an agenda of their own which I want no part of.

It would be a wonderfully erudite and convincing argument if a peacenik liberal had written it. That the author was a champion of old-style conservatism as editor of the Daily Telegraph for so many years, and a friend and confidante of Maggie Thatcher, is just.... how can I put this... sublime.

Tom Ridge Is One of Us

Former Bush cabinet secretary Tom Ridge is shrill:

Ridge says Cheney wrong about Lamont victory: [Responding to Cheney's claim that Lamont's victory would encourage "al Qaeda types"], former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge bridled at his former colleague's remark: "That may be the way the vice president sees it," he said, "but I don%u2019t see it that way, and I don't think most Americans see it that way."

What part of ph'nglui mglw'nafh Ann McFeaters R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn don't you understand?

Ann McFeaters is shrill!

Opinions - ANN McFEATTERS: Bush unchanged by presidency - sacbee.com: Before Bush went to Texas to deal with brush and ponder with Condi Rice how to get out of incredible messes without changing policy, he went to the White House briefing room to joke with reporters.... Bush's demeanor was interesting. Beset with problems that daily get worse, he was as jovial as ever. He laughingly referred to former TV newsman Sam Donaldson as a "has-been." He sparred with the press regulars, prickly disdain mixed with arm's-length bonhomie.

But what was most striking is how little the world's most onerous office has changed him... he remains absolutely convinced he is "the decider" making the right faith-based decisions....

It's now well acknowledged that Bush is happy in his bubble of self-imposed isolation. He meets with foreigners but without true give-and-take even in crisis conversations. Foreigners visit the White House as they used to go on bended knee to ancient Rome. Bush travels but sees few real people. All is scripted. He talks with advisers but rarely interacts with members of Congress, even senior Republicans.

He seems to care nothing about winning hearts and minds in other countries. Foreign leaders say he lectures but does not listen. He does not have the long telephone conversations late at night that

former President Clinton loved to keep him in touch with what others were thinking. He seems indifferent to what experts think...

Ia Sargent! Ia!

Greg Sargent is shrill and unbalanced:

The Horse's Mouth: MEDIA LETS TONY SNOW'S LIES ABOUT DEMS GO UNCHALLENGED. For the sake of argument, let's stipulate that one of the most basic tasks of journalists is to provide readers or viewers with the basic information they need to evaluate the truth or falsehood of what their public officials are saying. Can we agree on that?

OK, then. With that in mind, it needs to be said that today's coverage of White House press secretary Tony Snow's remarks amid the aftermath of Ned Lamont's victory constitutes an extraordinary across-the-board abdication of journalistic duty.

During yesterday's press briefing, Snow said this:

I know a lot of people have tried to make this a referendum on the President; I would flip it. I think instead it's a defining moment for the Democratic Party, whose national leaders now have made it clear that if you disagree with the extreme left in their party they're going to come after you.

This is not only a lie; it's an easily demonstrable lie. Most of the Democratic Party's key leadership figures backed Joe Lieberman, not Lamont. This is a matter of public record. It's a point which can be made in half a sentence. And it's a point that should have been in every single news account which carried Snow's remarks.

So was it? Nope. Far from it, in fact. Did the Los Angeles Times piece quoting Snow's lies carry this simple rebuttal? No, it didn't. Neither did Time magazine's big wrap-up of how the GOP is allegedly going to reap enormous gains from Lamont's victory. Nor did the Associated Press's account. The AP story was carried by CBS and likely by newspapers across the country. In short, anyone with the misfortune of getting his or her news from the above news orgs -- or from the perhaps scores of papers carrying the AP account -- was almost certainly deprived of the most basic info required to evaluate the White House's calculated remarks on the biggest story of the day.

As best as I can determine, the only reporter who took the elementary step of rebutting Snow's lies was Adam Nagourney of the New York Times. After quoting Snow, Nagourney wrote this:

In fact, the vast majority of Democratic Party leaders supported Mr. Lieberman in the primary, and did not endorse Mr. Lamont until after the results were in.

For God's sake, was that really so difficult? Don't the editors and reporters who failed to include that one sentence take any professional pride at all in their work anymore?

60% of Americans are Shrill and Unbalanced!

Why, it was just last Thursday that 45% of Americans had not yet been driven to shrill, unholy madness by the incompetence, malevelence, mendacity, and sheer disconnection from reality of the George W. Bush administration. But another 6 days means another 5% are lost to us. Or, actually, gained to us, here at the order.

That's right: 60% of Americans have gone off the deep end. The newest recruits, all 14,871,813.7 of them, are currently practicing glossolalia in the break room. It's pretty crowded in there, even when only seven tenths of Hugh Franklin showed up. The other 3 tenths was last seen wandering the aisles at a Wal-Mart outside Memphis, mumbling something about "bipartisanship". But never mind that. At this rate, it will be only 48 more days before the only people left who aren't jerking their knees at the mention of the "policy" initiatives of the George W. Bush administration will be... the members of the George W. Bush administration.

Thinking of grooming your tentacles and joining up? Then sing along!

That is not dead which can eternal lie,
and with strange aeons
        your kids will still be paying off the national debt.

A Rejected Application

As much as he wishes he could be, Lawrence Kaplan of The New Republic is not shrill:

FT.com / Comment / Urban planet - A military estranged from the architects of war: By Lawrence Kaplan: It is America’s fourth summer in Iraq and, quite possibly, its last. Yet the war in Iraq grinds on just as it did over the last few summers. Helicopter gunships still glide through the sky, explosions still rip through Baghdad and soldiers still choke in the heat. Gone, however, are the days when the Coalition Provisional Authority buzzed with activity. Gone, too, is any sense of momentum or expectation of a decent outcome.... In the political arena, too, opinion-makers speak of the war in the past tense. (And those, such as senator Joseph Lieberman, who do not, may pay a steep price.) Thus, Robert Shrum, Democratic campaign adviser, recently told The Washington Post: “The war in Iraq is over except for the dying.”

Alas, someone forgot to tell the US military. From top officers down to young captains, its loyalists suspect the US army has been orphaned in Iraq. “We’re left holding the bag,” a young officer told me on a recent trip to Iraq, “and it’s full of garbage.” The officer corps’ resentments rarely spill into public view. An exception was earlier this year when retired generals, claiming to speak for their active-duty counterparts, called for the head of their one-time boss, Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary....

64 per cent of the military was confident of victory in Iraq, a much higher percentage than the broader public and roughly twice the percentage of civilian elite. Having bled so much there, the military has very little use for the suggestion it did so in vain. Then, too, there is the simple truth – felt more keenly in Baghdad than in Washington – that, if not for US forces, Iraq would come apart at the seams.

When the army comes home, there will be a reckoning. The possibility of defeat has set the top brass manoeuvring in the capital to ensure that political leaders, not military commanders, take the fall. Frankly, they should.... While there is enough blame to go around... most of it lies squarely with America’s civilian leadership. Whether measured by the refusal to solicit (much less heed) military expertise or to devise even the broadest outlines of a coherent strategy, the problem in Iraq has never been lack of capability but confusion – at the top – over how to use it...

He is not shrill because he writes the words "America's civilian leadership" where he should write "George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, George Tenet, Paul Bremer, Condi Rice, Colin Powell, and all the others."

We will consider his reapplications when he can actually utter the names. As long as he finds them unutterable, he is not qualified for membership.

Right-Wing Thinker Thomas Barnett Takes Up Residence Here at Miskatonic U.!

Thomas P.M. Barnett is perhaps the most subtle, interesting, and intelligent strategic thinker coming at the problem of American grand strategy from the right. He holds tight to and thinks in a rational way about the Big Question: What should America be doing now to raise the odds that the world of 2100 will be one in which our descendants can live happily?

Thomas Barnett is a sane, reasonable, non-shrill guy--or was. But now he too has been driven mad. He too has joined us--those who were once sane, reasonable, and well-anchored in reality who have been driven into shrill unholy madness by the mendacity, malevolence, incompetence, and total disconnection from reality of George W. Bush, his administration, their acolytes, and their apologists.

Yes. Bernard Lewis has driven him over the edge and into the gulf, and now he too ululates his shrill screeds of madness beneath the dead uncaring stars:

Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog: Now we have regional experts telling us who's undeterrable?:

OP-ED: "August 22," by Bernard Lewis, Wall Street Journal, 8 August 2006, p. A10.

Front page of WSJ promised analysis of MAD (mutual assured destruction) working in Mideast, so I figured we'd see someone who's an expert address this issue systematically, pointing out how it's worked the world over, including in the Mideast with Israel, for decades.

Instead we get numerology worthy of Louis Farrakhan from Bernard Lewis.

Thus is the pathetic state of the strategic discussion on Iran right now, after Tehran very strategically and very rationally and very cleverly outmaneuvered the Bush administration by launching this proxy war in the West Bank and Lebanon, very artfully deterring any serious possibility of any significant military option by the U.S. through the rest of the Bush second term.

The logic is awfully strained: Ahmadinejad promises a response on the latest U.S. nuke proposal by 8/22. August 22 equals the 27th day of the month of Rajab in the year 1427. On this night, many Muslims mark the night flight of Muhammad on a winged horse, which he flies to the Jerusalem and then to heaven and back.

Got it?

Here's the clinching analysis:

This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary the world. It is far from certain that Mr. Ahmadinejad plans any such cataclysmic events precisely for Aug. 22. But it would be wise to bear the possibility in mind.

Now there's some useful speculation that's merely a cover to declare Iranian leaders irrational on the basis of religious imagery instead of the historical record since 1979 (quick, spot the suicidal strikes by Iran!).

Then Lewis trots out an old blustery quote from Khomeimi promising "annihilation" of the "world devourers."

That's it. Lewis offers an ass-covering, quasi-prediction of a world-ending strike by Iran on 22 August. I guess the whole thing might seem implausible because Iran has no nuclear-armed missiles, but why bother noting that when you're spinning Jack Van Impe-style tales from Iran's Shiite version of the Book of Revelation?

Bernard Lewis as Nostradamus of the Middle East. This is what the neocons have devolved into?

Lewis claims the mindset of Iran's leaders means that "MAD is not a constraint, it is an inducement."

Wow! Nice leap of assertion there.

So MAD is now all of a sudden madness, so sayeth Lewis.

Wasn't madness for genocidal Stalin or "we will bury you" Khrushchev. Wasn't maddness for the greatest mass murderer of all time, Mr. "you're nukes are just a paper tiger" Mao Zedong. Hasn't been for "irrational" foes Pakistan and India. Or theocratic "never again" Israel. We easily deterred Gotterdammerung-promising Saddam (twice) on that score.

But those are just historical facts.

But Iran? Surely it breaks down here, and all you need to prove that is Muhammad's night flight to Buraq.

Let's stick to reality, not rhetoric on Iran.

Bush is an evangelical. Do we interpret everything he does by the Book of Revelation?

Worked for Jimmy Carter, our first born-again prez, did it not?

Ah, Iran had its revolution on his watch? Coincidence?

I am stunned the WSJ would publish and promote just a goofy op-ed.

Lewis goes to the back of the classroom for this, complete with dunce hat.

Regional experts are very dangerous and very biased sources of strategic analysis. They simply know too much, being such vertical drill-down artists, that left to their own devices they will pepper us with crappy pseudo-analysis like this.

72 "virgins," or is it 72 "raisins"? Gotta get these apocalyptic translations right before we launch any tubes, okay?

Bush and Co. thought they were slowly but surely setting up Iran for some end-of-term miltary strike. Iran's leaders weren't stupid enough to sit still for that, so they pre-empted in a very calculated, safe and effectively deterring manner.

Trying to mask all that strategic failure with gobbleygook like this is just plain sad.

The New York Times Is Not Shrill Enough!

The New York Times. They always blame the Democrats first:

A Timetable Isn't an Exit Strategy - New York Times: As America's military experience in Iraq grows ever more nightmarish, it is becoming clear that President Bush's strategy comes down to this: Keep holding to a failing course for the next 29 months and leave it to the next administration to clean up the mess. That abdication of responsibility cannot be allowed to continue at the expense of American lives, military readiness and international influence. With the Republican majority in Congress moving in perpetual lock step behind the White House...

You would think that would be the beginning of an editorial about how voters nationwide should dump the feckless Republicans from Congress. Sadly, no! The editorial goes on:

the job of pressing the issue has been dumped in the laps of the Democrats. Unfortunately, they have their own version of reality avoidance. It involves pretending that the nightmare can be ended by adopting a timetable for a phased withdrawal of American troops.... The Democratic timetable spins a different fantasy: that if the Iraqis are told that American troops will be leaving in stages, at specific dates, their government will rise to the occasion and create its own security forces to maintain order.... Democrats are embracing the withdrawal option because it sounds good on the surface and allows them to avoid a more far-reaching discussion that might expose their party's own foreign policy divisions. Most of all, they want an election-year position that maximizes the president's weakness without exposing their candidates to criticism. But they are doing nothing to help the public understand the grim options we face...

What does the New York Times suggest that Democrats do to "help the public understand the grim options we face"? What is the New York Times doing to "help the public understand the grim options we face"? Wouldn't an editorial laying out those grim options and demanding action from Senate Republcians be a much more fruitful use of its space than yet another exercise in blaming the Democrats first?

Perhaps a clue to the peculiar mental universe that the New York Times inhabits can be gained by looking at this from Washington Post reporter Tom Ricks, where he says that he could not write the stories that needed to be written in the runup to the attack on Iraq because:

Congress didn't hold hearings in which credible information was presented that said, no, the administration's case is wrong.... Congress is kind of the engine of Washington, the engine of government. And if Congress is asleep at the wheel, if war seems inevitable, at some point your editors say, why do you keep writing about doubts about this war, when it's going to happen?... You've written a lot of stories about the doubts about the war. Give us more stories about the war plan...

I think the same thing is going on here with the New York Times editorial board. They no longer think--did they ever think?--that their principal reason for being was to inform their readers. They think, instead, that their principal reason for being is to be stenographers: to transcribe what the powers that be are saying.

Welcome, Larry Kudlow!

One of our eldritch servitor beasts, half-man, half-mollusc (PGL) writes:

Angry Bear: I never thought I'd see the day when we welcomed Lawrence Kudlow to the Order of the Shrill. OK, I may be just a mere servant in the order, but let me turn the microphone over to Larry:

Top generals John P. Abizaid, the head of military operations in Iraq, and Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are strongly suggesting that Iraq may be sinking from a state of violent sectarian unrest into a true civil war.... Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, now estimates that corruption costs in Iraq have reached a startling $4 billion per year. This is vital taxpayer war money - money you'd think would be safeguarded by the GOP Congress. But nothing, it seems, could be further from the truth. A Wall Street Journal story on the subject states that "the Bush administration continues to wind down its ambitious Iraq reconstruction program, which has spent ten of billions of dollars on rebuilding efforts that have largely failed to restore basic services such as water or electricity to pre-war levels." And why has this spending failed? Sen. Susan Collins (R., Me.), the chair of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee that overseas the war money, says this is a story of "mistakes made, plans poorly conceived, overwhelmed by ongoing violence, and the waste, greed, and corruption that drains dollars that should have been used to build schools, improve the electrical grid, and repair the oil infrastructure."

True enough, corruption is a big part of this problem, in particular the oil smuggling that continues to siphon off what could be precious oil revenues for Iraq. U.S. Comptroller General David Walker says 10 percent of Iraq's refined fuels and 30 percent of its imported fuels are being stolen. But Bowen says this is a problem that began at home: "the Bush administration's overall handling of Iraq contracting - from relying on no-bid contracts even when major fighting had ended, to failing to standardize contracting regulations to help prevent fraud - was deeply flawed." He goes on to say that the U.S. has not provided the proper contracting and procurement support necessary to manage reconstruction efforts that were begun three years ago, and also cites widespread mismanagement among competing U.S. government agencies.

Larry recommends Congressional oversight and the return of Harry Truman...

Shrill Talking Memo, by Joshua Micah Marshall

Josh Micah Marshall is, for a minute, left alone without his keepers with the Washington Post editorial page. We apologize for the mess, and assure all innocent bystanders that it will never happen again:

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: August 06, 2006 - August 12, 2006 Archives: There's no party more smarmily mendacious in the Social Security debate than the Washington Post editorial page. As long-time readers know, for several years the GOP has been trying to fool voters and protect vulnerable incumbents with unpopular positions by continually forcing changes in the name of their policy on Social Security. For literally decades they called their private account policy 'privatization'. But when support for the policy began to go south they insisted that the name for the policy was actually a slur. They even went so far as to say it was a name of denigration devised by Democrats.

Friday's Post editorial on Social Security actually went so far as to ape not only the 'it's not privatization' bamboozlement but even took the GOP's lead banning the phrase 'private accounts' in favor of the better poll-testing 'personal accounts'.

From the Post ...

Yesterday an e-mail sent out on behalf of Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, dismissed Henry M. Paulson Jr.'s comments on "privatizing" Social Security, adding that this policy has been "soundly rejected by the American people."

The Social Security reform that President Bush pushed last year involved personal retirement accounts. But it did not involve "privatization": The accounts, which were to be optional, were to be designed and administered by the government, with no opportunities for Wall Street salesmen to foist enormous hidden fees on unsuspecting workers.

On one level, semantics is certainly not as important as the substance of the underlying policies words describe. In this case, 'privatization', by every relevant standard and criterion, is the appropriate word for the policy in question. But editorial pages are supposed to forums for forceful discussion and advocacy of policy unencumbered by either sides spin and bamboozlement, but especially by one side's intentional efforts to deceive voters. In this case the Post really is an arm of the RNC.

David Broder Is too Much of a Moral Coward to Be Shrill

Now he tells us:

Roger Ailes: Shorter David Broder: "Bush has gambled and lost in Iraq (and driven reactionary views in this column within parenthesis), but maybe history will spin him (and me) out of it."

---

Doubling Two Bad Bets?: By David S. Broder: If you think there is an echo in the air when officials discuss the twin crises in Iraq and Lebanon, you're not hearing things. In both cases the argument for carrying on the destructive current policy comes down to a claim that "we can't afford to let the other guy win."

President Bush says over and over that cutting short the occupation of Iraq would turn that country over to the terrorists and embolden them to carry their wicked plots ever closer to our shores. He also endorses -- implicitly -- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's view that an early cease-fire with Lebanon would strengthen Hezbollah and make its prime sponsor, Iran, even more of a threat to its neighbors. That political support enables Olmert to wage the kind of campaign he has in Lebanon....

In both cases, the argument is not that continuing on the present course will necessarily or probably yield a positive result. On the contrary, it is basically a claim that it is unacceptable to change -- because the other side will claim a victory.

But if Hezbollah in Lebanon and the insurgents in Iraq really are deadly threats to Israel and the United States, respectively, then those nations should have used their full military might -- which is overwhelming -- to deal with the menace.... In both cases, the leaders of government failed to make the kind of commitment that could have produced a lasting victory.

Now they are reduced to saying that they cannot accept defeat.... But once the hope for victory is gone, the issue remains: What do you do? The answer from Bush and from Olmert is: Carry on. Do not waver. And do not question the logic of prolonging the agony....

The point is that history and economics have their own logic. A military mission that fails to yield a victory does not always presage disaster. Today, virtually no one argues that we should have continued fighting the North Koreans or the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese.

Can we think about the costs of carrying on, without an end in sight, against Hezbollah and the insurgents in Iraq?

Sorry. That's not shrill enough.

The New York Times Is Not Shrill Enough

Gail Collins and the rest of the New York TImes are not shrill enough. They write:

The Sound of One Domino Falling - New York Times: It's been obvious for years that Donald Rumsfeld is in denial of reality, but the defense secretary now also seems stuck in a time warp. You could practically hear the dominoes falling as he told the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday that it was dangerous for Americans to even talk about how to end the war in Iraq.

"If we left Iraq prematurely," he said, "the enemy would tell us to leave Afghanistan and then withdraw from the Middle East. And if we left the Middle East, they'd order us and all those who don't share their militant ideology to leave what they call the occupied Muslim lands from Spain to the Philippines." And finally, he intoned, America will be forced "to make a stand nearer home."

No one in charge of American foreign affairs has talked like that in decades.... Americans are frightened by the growing chaos in the Mideast, and the last thing they needed to hear this week was Mr. Rumsfeld laying blame for sectarian violence on a few Al Qaeda schemers. What they want is some assurance that the administration has a firm grasp on reality and has sensible, achievable goals that could lead to an end to the American involvement in Iraq with as little long-term damage as possible. Instead, Mr. Rumsfeld offered the same old exhortation to stay the course, without the slightest hint of what the course is, other than the rather obvious point that the Iraqis have to learn to run their own country.

By contrast, the generals flanking him were pillars of candor and practicality. ... The generals tried to be optimistic about the state of the Iraqi security forces, but it was hard. They had to acknowledge that a militia controls Basra, that powerful Iraqi government officials run armed bands that the Pentagon considers terrorist organizations financed by Iran, and that about a third of the Iraqi police force can't be trusted to fight on the right side.

As for Mr. Rumsfeld, he suggested that lawmakers just leave everything up to him and the military command and stop talking about leaving Iraq.... Americans who once expected the Pentagon to win the war in Iraq have now been reduced to waiting for an indication that at least someone is minding the store. They won't be comforted to hear Mr. Rumsfeld fretting about protecting Spain from Muslim occupation.

The natural, the logical final paragraph to such an editorial would be something like this:

A president and vice-president who regard Donald Rumsfeld as their best choice for Secretary of Defense are unfit for office. Not only should Donald Rumsfeld leave the Pentagon this morning, but for the sake of America George W. Bush and Richard Cheney should resign as well.

Yet they don't say that: they are not shrill enough.

Peter Galbraith Is Shrill!

One of the Great Old Ones speaks:

The New York Review of Books: Mindless in Iraq: While I was in Iraq in June, American forces killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and, on the same day, Iraq formed its government of national unity. President Bush greeted these developments with unusual restraint and announced he was convening a two-day Camp David summit to review his Iraq strategy. Any hopes that there would be a serious rethinking of Iraq policy were dashed when it turned out that the summit was really a ruse so that Bush could fake out his own cabinet by appearing on a videoconference from Baghdad when they expected to see him at the presidential retreat for breakfast. The President was so impressed with his own stunt that he had the White House press office put out the word that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had only five minutes' notice of his arrival, not understanding that this undercut both Maliki and Bush.

On his return, Bush held a press conference during which, it seemed, he could barely contain his enthusiasm. In response to a question about progress in providing electricity, producing oil, and controlling violence, he swerved into a discussion of his encounter with the speaker of Iraq's parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani. The President didn't seem to recall his name but readily remembered his religion:

The Sunni--I was impressed, by the way, by the Speaker--Denny Hastert told me I'd like him; Denny met with him. And I was impressed by him. He's a fellow that had been put in prison by Saddam and, interestingly enough, put in prison by us. And he made a decision to participate in the government. And he was an articulate person. He talked about running the parliament. It was interesting to see a person that could have been really bitter talk about the skills he's going to need to bring people together to run the parliament. And I found him to be a hopeful person.

They tell me that he wouldn't have taken my phone call a year ago%u2014I think I might have shared this with you at one point in time%u2014and there I was, sitting next to the guy. And I think he enjoyed it as much as I did. It was a refreshing moment.

The incurious White House press corps never asked the obvious question: Why had the United States jailed al-Mashhadani? According to Sunnis and Shiites at the top levels of government in Iraq, al-Mashhadani was a member of, or closely associated with, two al-Qaeda-linked terrorists groups, Ansar Islam and Ansar al-Sunna. The first operated until 2003 in a no man's land high in the mountains between Iraqi Kurdistan and Iran while the second has been responsible for some of the worse terrorist attacks on Iraq's Shiites and Kurds. The Iraqis say they gave the Americans specific intelligence on al-Mashhadani's affiliations with those groups and his actions in support of terrorists.

None of this seems to have mattered to a president who is as casual in his approach to national security as his defense secretary. At the same press conference Bush repeated that "the American people have got to understand that Iraq is a part of the war on terror."

Tom Friedman Joins Us!

For lo these many years Tom Friedman has been not only un-shrill, but a criminal cheerleader for violence who believed that the real reason for the U.S. to attack Iraq:

Tom Friedman: which was never stated, was to burst what I would call the "terrorism bubble," which had built up during the 1990s. This bubble was a dangerous fantasy, believed by way too many people in the Middle East. This bubble said that it was OK to plow airplanes into the World Trade Center, commit suicide in Israeli pizza parlors, praise people who do these things as "martyrs," and donate money to them.... This bubble had to be burst, and the only way to do it was to go right into the heart of the Arab world and smash something--to let everyone know that we, too, are ready to fight and die to preserve our open society. Yes, I know, it's not very diplomatic--it's not in the rule book--but everyone in the neighborhood got the message: Henceforth, you will be held accountable. Why Iraq, not Saudi Arabia or Pakistan? Because we could--period. Sorry to be so blunt, but, as I also wrote before the war: Some things are true even if George Bush believes them...

But now that we have thoroughly, thoroughly created the conditions in which batshit-insane sectarian madmen have smashed Iraq to bits, Friedman has a change of heart.

Now he too is shrill!

Time for Plan B - New York Times: It is now obvious that we are not midwifing democracy in Iraq. We are baby-sitting a civil war.... [T]hree years of efforts to democratize Iraq are not working... "staying the course" is pointless... it's time to start thinking about... how we might disengage with the least damage.... The Sunni jihadists and Baathists are as dedicated as ever to making this U.S.-Iraqi democracy initiative fail. That, and the runaway sectarian violence resulting from having too few U.S. troops and allowing a militia culture to become embedded, have made Iraq a lawless mess....

Since the Bush team never gave us a Plan A for Iraq, it at least owes us a Plan B.... I think we need to try a last-ditch Bosnia-like peace conference that would bring together all of Iraq's factions and neighbors.... [T]he U.S. would probably need to declare its intention to leave.... What would be the consequences of leaving without such a last-ditch peace effort, or if it just fails? Iraq could erupt into a much wider civil war, drawing in its neighbors. Or, Iraqis might stare into this abyss and actually come to terms with each other....

If Iraq opts for all-out civil war, its two million barrels a day will be off the market and oil could go above $100 a barrel.... Some fear that Iran will be the winner.... Yes, the best way to contain Iran would have been to produce a real Shiite-led democracy in Iraq, exposing the phony one in Tehran. But second best is leaving Iraq. Because the worst option -- the one Iran loves -- is for us to stay in Iraq, bleeding, and in easy range to be hit by Iran if we strike its nukes.

Finally, the war in Iraq has so divided us at home and abroad that leaving... might also make it easier to build coalitions to deal with post-U.S. Iraq, Iran, Hezbollah and Syria... We need... a broad coalition. The longer we maintain a unilateral failing strategy in Iraq, the harder it will be to build such a coalition, and the stronger the enemies of freedom will become.

Another One Driven Shrill by America's UnPress Corps...

Mike Peterson of Glenn Falls, NY, is shrill:

Poynter Online - Forums: Topic: Letters Sent to Romenesko
Date/Time: 8/2/2006 1:01:38 PM
Title: Subject: Trust, don't verify
Posted By: Jim Romenesko

From MIKE PETERSON, Glens Falls, NY: Britt Robson asks, "Is it the rightful job of reporters to try to verify allegations or implications of a personal nature that surface in a partisan mud-slinging battle?"

Absolutely not. They should just pass them along to readers (and voters) without any attempt to verify them. This is the shape of modern reporting: Pass it along, and try to balance it with something roughly equivalent and equally unverified from the other camp.

Then send your intern to the mall to ask people if they've heard about it, and if it's going to influence their vote in November. Run a political cartoon making a joke about it. Run a story saying it has become the hot topic of the blogosphere (make sure you use the word "blogosphere," preferably in the hed).

But verify? Ha ha! That is so typical of the MSM with its postmodern 20th century groupthink! The bloggers will straighten it out -- it's not the job of the dead-tree MSM to impose their arbitrary notions of "truth" on people!

55% of Americans are Shrill and Unbalanced.

This just in:

A Gallup poll reveals that of Americans want U.S. troops out of Iraq. That's almost half as many as the number of Iraqis who are so glad to be liberated they're setting off firecrackers in passing American jeeps.

And 54% think our invasion of Iraq was a big mistake. Do they hate America? No, they just been driven to shrill unholy madness by the incompetence, malevolence, mendacity, and sheer disconnection from reality of the George W. Bush administration.

54% of 299,386,641 people is 161,668,786 people. Professor Derleth and 7 volunteer shoggoths will be calling you soon to help raise money for a bigger conference hall.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh my fellow Americans R'lyeh wagn'nagl fhtagn! Aaaaiiiiii!!!!

Joe Lieberman Is Not Shrill

Joe Lieberman is not shrill. He has faith in George W. Bush. The mighty brainpower of the president will win the war in Iraq, where the insurgency is in its "last throes." Billmon--who using his tentacles can prepare ten drinks at once at the Whiskey Bar--writes:

Whiskey Bar: Day Dream Believer:

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman said on Tuesday that he remained confident that the United States could begin withdrawing troops from Iraq as early as the end of this year . . .

According to U.S. Army officials, the withdrawal of troops from war-rattled Iraq has been delayed for four more months past their scheduled departure. The news came as U.S. President George W. Bush agreed to send more U.S. troops into Baghdad to curb the sectarian violence there . . . The Pentagon also identified four other additional Army and Marine Corps units consisting of about 25,000 troops due to deploy to Iraq in the future, enough to maintain the U.S. force at about 130,000 troops for a year . . .

Pretending to live on a different planet doesn't seem like a very smart campaign strategy to me, but then I'm not from Connecticut. Maybe it's the nutmeg.

Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations Is Shrill!!!!!

Yes. We can now reveal that the New York City office of the Order of the Shrill is in the sub-basement of the Council on Foreign Relations's Upper East Side townhouse. Thanks to CFR head Richard Haass for the keys: he is, of course, ONE OF US!

Via Greg Djerejian, who can hit five octaves above middle C himself, on a good day, who prays for Richard Armitage to save us:

The Belgravia Dispatch: What, Me Worry? Opportunity's A-Knockin': Bush, a couple days back with Blair:

We agree that a multinational force must be dispatched to Lebanon quickly, to augment a Lebanese army as it moves to the south of that country. An effective multinational force will help speed delivery of humanitarian relief, facilitate the return of displaced persons, and support the Lebanese government as it asserts full sovereignty over its territory and guards its borders.

We're working quickly to achieve these goals. Tomorrow, Secretary Rice will return to the region. She will work with the leaders of Israel and Lebanon to seize this opportunity to achieve lasting peace and stability for both of their countries. Next week, the U.N. Security Council will meet, as well. Our goal is a Chapter 7 resolution setting out a clear framework for cessation of hostilities on an urgent basis, and mandating the multinational force.

WaPo, today:

Haass, the former Bush aide who leads the Council on Foreign Relations, laughed at the president's public optimism. "An opportunity?" Haass said with an incredulous tone. "Lord, spare me. I don't laugh a lot. That's the funniest thing I've heard in a long time. If this is an opportunity, what's Iraq? A once-in-a-lifetime chance?"

Bush's elephantine innocence about the Middle East increasingly has us staggering about the region like purblind ignorants. Meantime, his rhetoric is getting increasingly uneven. Note this part of the same press conference, where he mixes up Syria and Iran, and appears to state one or the other already has a nuke:

Q Thank you. Mr. President, and Prime Minister Blair, can I ask you both tonight what your messages are for the governments of Iran and Syria, given that you say this is the crisis of the 21st century?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Want me to start? My message is, give up your nuclear weapon and your nuclear weapon ambitions. That's my message to Syria -- I mean, to Iran. And my message to Syria is, become an active participant in the neighborhood for peace.

As I said, uneven, sloppy rhetoric. Bush, who struggles to understand even the broadest contours of the Middle East canvas, clearly cannot effectively imbibe the myriad complexities (dreary details!) of this so complicated region. And, alas, this is not a situation like we had with Ronald Reagan, where a leader of limited intellect and strong core convictions, at least could delegate to serious players. Now instead, we have Rumsfeld and Cheney-- in short, discredited, damaged goods. Meantime, Rice has her hands (very) full, and has lost in Bob Zoellick a talented deputy. I again repeat my call for Richard Armitage to be urgently appointed Secretary of Defense. These are times of significant crisis, and the bench is far too thin. While bridges between the Bush-Cheney camp and Powell-Armitage one may have been mostly burned (this is sheer speculation, of course), I have heard some accounts that Bush felt more comfortable around Armitage than, say, Powell, and had even bonded with him on occasion. And while I'm no Plameologist a la Tom Maguire, I trust Armitage is eminently confirmable. There will be quite a few military-centric, diplomatic security issues to grapple with in the Middle East over the coming months, and Rumsfeld won't have nary a clue how to broach them. We need someone like Armitage, badly--whose combination of long military (four Vietnam tours, rather than deferments) and diplomatic experience would be a major asset.

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