Kill Them! We Are Going To Wipe Them Out!

Presidential Bloodlust

The Movie-Made War World of George W. Bush
By Tom Engelhardt

02/06/08 "Tomdispatch" -- - Here's a memory for you. I was probably five or six and sitting with my father in a movie house off New York's Times Square -- one of the slightly seedy theaters of that dawn of the 1950s moment that tended to show double or triple feature B-westerns or war movies. We were catching some old oater which, as I recall, began with a stagecoach careening dramatically down the main street of a cow town. A wounded man is slumped in the driver's seat, the horses running wild. Suddenly -- perhaps from the town's newspaper office -- a cowboy dressed in white and in a white Stetson rushes out, leaps on the team of horses, stops the stagecoach, and says to the driver: "Sam, Sam, who dun it to ya?" (or the equivalent). At just that moment, the camera catches a man, dressed all in black in a black hat -- and undoubtedly mustachioed -- skulking into the saloon.

My dad promptly turns to me and whispers: "He's the one. He did it."

Believe me, I'm awed. All I can say in wonder and protest is: "Dad, how can you know? How can you know?"

But, of course, he did know and, within a year or two, I certainly had the same simple code of good and evil, hero and villain, under my belt. It wasn't a mistake I was likely to make twice.

Above all, of course, you couldn't mistake the bad guys of those old films. They looked evil. If they were "natives," they also made no bones about what they were going to do to the white hats, or, in the case of Gunga Din (1939), the pith helmets. "Rise, our new-made brothers," the evil "guru" of that film tells his followers. "Rise and kill. Kill, lest you be killed yourselves. Kill for the love of killing. Kill for the love of Kali. Kill! Kill! Kill!"

"Wipe Them Out!"

Kill! Kill! Kill! That was just the sort of thing the native equivalent of the black hat was likely to say. Such villains -- for a modern reprise, see the latest cartoon superhero blockbuster, Iron Man -- were not only fanatical, but usually at the very edge of madness as well. And their language reflected that.

I was brought back with a start to just such evil-doers of my American screen childhood last week by a memoir from a once-upon-a-time insider of the Bush presidency. No, not former White House press secretary Scott McClellan, who swept into the headlines by accusing the President of using "propaganda" and the "complicit enablers" of the media to take the U.S. to war in 2002-2003. I'm thinking of another insider, former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez. He got next to no attention for a presidential outburst he recorded in his memoir, Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story, so bloodthirsty and cartoonish that it should have caught the attention of the nation -- and so eerily in character, given the last years of presidential behavior, that you know it has to be on the money.

Let me briefly set the scene, as Sanchez tells it on pages 349-350 of Wiser in Battle. It's April 6, 2004. L. Paul Bremer III, head of the occupation's Coalition Provisional Authority, as well as the President's colonial viceroy in Baghdad, and Gen. Sanchez were in Iraq in video teleconference with the President, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. (Assumedly, the event was recorded and so revisitable by a note-taking Sanchez.) The first full-scale American offensive against the resistant Sunni city of Fallujah was just being launched, while, in Iraq's Shiite south, the U.S. military was preparing for a campaign against cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia.

According to Sanchez, Powell was talking tough that day: "We've got to smash somebody's ass quickly," the general reports him saying. "There has to be a total victory somewhere. We must have a brute demonstration of power." (And indeed, by the end of April, parts of Fallujah would be in ruins, as, by August, would expanses of the oldest parts of the holy Shiite city of Najaf. Sadr himself would, however, escape to fight another day; and, in order to declare Powell's "total victory," the U.S. military would have to return to Fallujah that November, after the U.S. presidential election, and reduce three-quarters of it to virtual rubble.) Bush then turned to the subject of al-Sadr: "At the end of this campaign al-Sadr must be gone," he insisted to his top advisors. "At a minimum, he will be arrested. It is essential he be wiped out."

Not long after that, the President "launched" what an evidently bewildered Sanchez politely describes as "a kind of confused pep talk regarding both Fallujah and our upcoming southern campaign [against the Mahdi Army]." Here then is that "pep talk." While you read it, try to imagine anything like it coming out of the mouth of any other American president, or anything not like it coming out of the mouth of any evil enemy leader in the films of the President's -- and my -- childhood:

"'Kick ass!' [Bush] said, echoing Colin Powell's tough talk. 'If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! This Vietnam stuff, this is not even close. It is a mind-set. We can't send that message. It's an excuse to prepare us for withdrawal.

"There is a series of moments and this is one of them. Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!'"

Keep in mind that the bloodlusty rhetoric of this "pep talk" wasn't meant to rev up Marines heading into battle. These were the President's well-embunkered top advisors in a strategy session on the eve of major military offensives in Iraq. Evidently, however, the President was intent on imitating George C. Scott playing General George Patton -- or perhaps even inadvertently channeling one of the evil villains of his onscreen childhood.

American Mad Mullahs

Let's recall a little history here: In the nineteenth century, Third World leaders who opposed Western imperial control were often not only demonized but imagined to be, in some sense, mad simply for taking on Western might. Throughout the latter part of that century, for instance, the British faced down various "mad mullahs" in North Africa.

Later, such imagery migrated easily enough to imperial Hollywood and thence into American movie houses. But here was the strange thing: In the Vietnam years, that era of reversals, a president of the United States privately expressed, for the first time, a desire to take on the mantle of madness previously reserved for the enemy in American culture (and undoubtedly many other cultures as well). It was not just that President Richard Nixon's domestic critics were ready to label him a madman, but that, in his desire to end the Vietnam War in a satisfyingly victorious fashion, he was ready to label himself one.

"I call it the madman theory, Bob," Nixon aide H.R. Haldeman reported the President saying. "I want the North Vietnamese to believe I've reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We'll just slip the word to them that, 'for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about Communism. We can't restrain him when he's angry -- and he has his hand on the nuclear button' -- and [North Vietnamese leader] Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace."

Henry Kissinger, Nixon's national security adviser, was equally fascinated with the possible bargaining advantage of having the enemy imagine the President as an evil, potentially world-obliterating madman. "Henry talked about it so much," according to Lawrence Lynn, a Kissinger aide, "… that the Russians and North Vietnamese wouldn't run risks because of Nixon's character." What made this fascination with the idea of a mad president more curious was that it fused with fears held by White House aides and advisers that Nixon, finger on the nuclear button, might indeed be impaired or nearing the edge of derangement. "My drunken friend," "that drunken lunatic," "the meatball mind," or "the basket case," was the way Kissinger referred to him after receiving his share of slurred late night phone calls.

So, in a historic moment almost four decades ago, a desperate president suddenly found it strategically advisable to present himself to his enemies as a potential nation slaughterer, a world incinerator (and his aides were privately ready to think of him as such); the leader of what was then commonly termed "the Free World," that is, was considering revealing himself as a mad emperor, a veritable Ming the Merciless.

Skip ahead these several decades and, presidentially, things have only gotten stranger. After all, we now have a president who has openly, even eagerly, faced the world as the Commander-in-Chief of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, Extraordinary Rendition, and Offshore Imprisonment; a Vice President who appeared openly on Capitol Hill to lobby against a bill banning torture; and key cabinet members who, from a White House conference room, micromanaged torture, down to specific techniques in specific cases. Talk about Ming the Merciless.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, you had one president whose critics would call him a "baby killer" -- "that horrible song" was the way President Lyndon Baines Johnson referred to the antiwar chant, "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" -- and another ready to take on the mantle of madness for purposes of private diplomacy; and each was reportedly brought to the edge of private madness while in office. But both were also uncomfortable with imagery of themselves and exceedingly awkward in the televisual world of politics that was already starting to surround them; neither imagined himself "in the movies."

Last Screen Appearance?

Usually Ronald Reagan, an actual actor, is seen as the president who spent his time in office playing the role of a lifetime, but, as it happens, he had nothing on George W. Bush. From the moment the attacks of September 11, 2001 gave him his "calling" as a "wartime" president, he has been deeply embroiled in acting out his cartoonish version of the role of the century. In fact, he has often seemed like little more than an overgrown boy plunged into his own war movie and war-play memories.

Let's remember that, soon after 9/11, this President launched his "crusade, this war on terrorism" with an image of a poster from some generic Western of his childhood. ("Bush offered some of his most blunt language to date when he was asked if he wanted bin Laden dead. 'I want justice,' Bush said. 'And there's an old poster out West… I recall, that said, Wanted, Dead or Alive.'") For years, he visibly glowed when publicly dressing up in a way that was redolent of the boy version of war (that is, doll... er, action figure) play. While Abraham Lincoln never put on a uniform and an actual general, Dwight D. Eisenhower, put his in the closet in his years as president, Bush uniquely and repeatedly appeared in public togged out in military wear, looking for all the world like a life-sized version of the original 12-inch G.I. Joe action figure -- whether "landing" a jet on the aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, and stepping out in a nifty flight suit, or appearing before massed hooah-ing troops in specially tailored jackets with "George W. Bush, Commander In Chief" carefully stitched across the breast. (In fact, more than one toy company did indeed produce G.I. Joe-style Bush action figures.)

Evident above all, from September 14, 2001 -- when he climbed that pile of rubble at "Ground Zero" in New York City and, bullhorn in hand, to "USA! USA!" cheers, wiped out the ignominy of his actions on the actual day of the attacks -- was just how much he enjoyed his role as resolute leader of a wartime America. While his Vice President and top advisors were grimly, if eagerly, preparing to whack Saddam Hussein and taking the opportunity to create a permanent commander-in-chief presidency, the President was visibly having the time of his life, perhaps for the first time since he gave up those "wild parties" of his youth.

A rivulet of telling details about his behavior has flowed by us in these years. We know from Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, for instance, that, after 9/11, Bush kept "his own personal scorecard for the war" in a desk drawer in the Oval Office -- photos with brief biographies and personality sketches of leading al-Qaeda figures, whose faces could be satisfyingly crossed out when killed or captured. In July 2003, frustrated by signs that the Sunni insurgency in Iraq wasn't going away, he impulsively offered this bit of bluster to reporters (as if he were the one who would take the brunt of future attacks): "There are some who feel like the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring 'em on."

In those moments when he spoke or acted spontaneously, there are plentiful clues that Bush took deep pleasure in finding himself in the role of commander-in-chief, and that he has been genuinely thrilled to do commander-in-chief-like things, at least as once pictured in the on-screen fantasy world of his youth. He was thrilled, for example, to receive from some of the troops who captured Saddam Hussein the pistol that the dictator had with him in his "spiderhole." Back in 2004, TIME Magazine's Matthew Cooper reported: "'He really liked showing it off,' says a recent visitor to the White House who has seen the gun. 'He was really proud of it.' The pistol's new place of residence is in the small study next to the Oval Office where Bush takes select visitors." Similarly, he returned from one of his brief trips to Iraq "inspired" by a meeting with the pilot who shot off the missile that incinerated Bin Laden wannabe Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

On and off throughout these years, you could glimpse just what a cartoon-like white-hat/black-hat persona he imagined himself to be playing. This was true whether he was in his blustery tough-guy mode, as when, in September 2007, he arrived in Australia publicly proclaiming that the U.S. was "kicking ass" in Iraq; or when, as commander-in-chief, he regularly teared up with genuine (movie) emotion as he handed out medals, some posthumous, for bravery; or even when he discussed his own wartime version of "sacrifice" -- he claimed to have given up golf for his war. As he told Mike Allen of Politico.com: "I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander-in-chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be as -- to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."

The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin has pointed out that even Bush's callow sacrifice of golf wasn't real -- he kept on playing -- but that hardly matters. What's crucial is that all this real life play-acting still moves, even thrills, him. Recently, for instance, he gave a graduation speech at the U.S. Air Force Academy, where he once again compared Iraq to World War II (and so, implicitly, himself to President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, a bust of whom he has kept in the Oval Office all these years). As Associated Press reporter Ben Feller commented: "Bush noted it was his last military academy commencement speech, and he seemed to savor it. He personally congratulated each cadet as cheers bounded across the stadium." Note that word "savor," when linked to the military and his commander-in-chief role. It's been a quality evident in the President's ongoing performance these last seven years. The photos of him goofing around with Air Force Academy graduates after his speech tell the story well.

In all this, you can sense a man in his own bubble world, engrossed in, and satisfied with, his own performance -- both as actor and, as in childhood, audience. What Gen. Ricardo Sanchez has added to this is the picture of a man who, even in 2004, was already dreaming Vietnam disaster ("This Vietnam stuff… We can't send that message."); who, perhaps sensing that his blockbuster was busting, like Richard Nixon before him, proved willing to mix the white-hat and black-hat codes of his movie childhood in remarkable ways. Under the strain of a failing war, in private and among his top officials, he didn't hesitate to take on that "guru" role and rally his closest followers with a call to kill, kill, kill!

A confused pep talk indeed. Even if Bush is still exhorting his top officials not to "blink," Americans should. After all, there are almost eight months left to his presidency, and a man of such stunning immaturity, who confuses fantasy with real life, and is given to outbursts of challenge, bluster, and bloodlust should be taken seriously. Nixon's "mad mullah" stayed private until transcripts of the Watergate tapes and memoirs started coming out. For us, the question remains, will this President be able to take a final turn on-screen before his term ends, playing the "mad mullah" in relation to Iran?

Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com, is the co-founder of the American Empire Project. His book, The End of Victory Culture, has recently been updated in a newly issued edition. He edited, and his work appears in, the first best of Tomdispatch book, The World According to Tomdispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso), which is being published this month.

[Note for Readers: As far as I know, the key passage in Sanchez's memoirs quoted in this piece was first noticed and commented upon by that indefatigable Iraq reporter, Patrick Cockburn. Unlike the key passages in Scott McClellan's memoir, this one from Sanchez's book has been little attended to. However, Dan Froomkin (cited in this piece), who does the Washington Post's online column, White House Watch, also noted its existence. That's not surprising. He seems never to miss any important development when it comes to the Bush administration. I link to his invaluable column often. As far as I'm concerned, it may be the most striking example of the sort of service a sharp columnist for a major paper can offer in the online world. I find it a daily must-read and recommend it strongly. Finally, if you want to know more about Mad Mullahs, American war movies, and a host of other subjects from World War II through the Iraq War, check out my recently updated book, The End of Victory Culture.]

Copyright 2008 Tom Engelhardt

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Forget Impeachment, Bring on The Straight Jacket

Or so saith the amusing while sickening article below.

Normally, I would agree, but these people don't believe in psychiatric treatment and, therefore, would probably not be what any one could call compliant. BushCo doesn't do compliant, even when they take an oath to to so.

Actually we do have something on the books for just such an occasion as this. It's called the 25th amendment. The problem is, the cabinet would have to institute it and they are apparently just as NUTZ as the big two.

But, given the reports of late, that Gates and Rice are trying to hold off Cheney and his War lusting NeoCons, we might have signs of sanity. The sane, if there really are any, might want to think about what their duties to the country and the constitution are now, before all hell breaks loose and they find themselves in the crosshairs of the angry masses, right along with Junior and the Dick

Straitjacket Bush

The president's warmongering remarks on the Iranian threat suggest he is psychotic. Really.

October 25, 2007

Forget impeachment.

Liberals, put it behind you. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney shouldn't be treated like criminals who deserve punishment. They should be treated like psychotics who need treatment.

Because they've clearly gone mad.

Exhibit A: We're in the middle of a disastrous war in Iraq, the military and political situation in Afghanistan is steadily worsening, and the administration's interrogation and detention tactics have inflamed anti-Americanism and fueled extremist movements around the globe. Sane people, confronting such a situation, do their best to tamp down tensions, rebuild shattered alliances, find common ground with hostile parties and give our military a little breathing space. But crazy people? They look around and decide it's a great time to start another war.

That would be with Iran, and you'd have to be deaf not to hear the war drums. Last week, Bush remarked that "if you're interested in avoiding World War III . . . you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." On Sunday, Cheney warned of "the Iranian regime's efforts to destabilize the Middle East and to gain hegemonic power . . . [we] cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its most aggressive ambitions." On Tuesday, Bush insisted on the need "to defend Europe against the emerging Iranian threat."

Huh? Iran is now a major threat to Europe? The Iranians are going to launch a nuclear missile (that they don't yet possess) against Europe (for reasons unknown because, as far as we know, they're not mad at anyone in Europe)? This is lunacy in action.

Writing in Newsweek on Oct. 20, Fareed Zakaria, a solid centrist and former editor of Foreign Affairs, put it best. Citing Bush's invocation of "the specter of World War III if Iran gained even the knowledge needed to make a nuclear weapon," Zakaria concluded that "the American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality. . . . Iran has an economy the size of Finland's. . . . It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are . . . allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?"

Planet Cheney.

Zakaria may be misinterpreting the president's remark about World War III though. He saw it as a dangerously loopy Bush prediction about the future behavior of a nuclear Iran -- the idea being, presumably, that possessing "the knowledge" to make a nuclear weapon would so empower Iran's repressive leaders that they'll giddily rush out and start World War III.

But you could read Bush's remark as a madman's threat rather than a madman's prediction -- as a warning to recalcitrant states, from Germany to Russia, that don't seem to share his crazed obsession with Iran. The message: Fall into line with administration policy toward Iran or you can count on the U.S.A. to try to start World War III on its own. And when it comes to sparking global conflagration, a U.S. attack on Iran might be just the thing. Yee haw!

You'd better believe these guys would do it too. Why not? They have nothing to lose -- they're out of office in 15 months anyway. Après Bush-Cheney, le déluge! (Have fun, Hillary.)

But all this creates a conundrum. What's a constitutional democracy to do when the president and vice president lose their marbles?

The U.S. is full of ordinary people with serious forms of mental illness -- delusional people with violent fantasies who think they're the president, or who think they get instructions from the CIA through their dental fillings.

The problem with Bush is that he is the president -- and he gives instructions to the CIA and military, without having to go through his dental fillings.

Impeachment's not the solution to psychosis, no matter how flagrant. But despite their impressive foresight in other areas, the framers unaccountably neglected to include an involuntary civil commitment procedure in the Constitution.

Still, don't lose hope. By enlisting the aid of mental health professionals and the court system, Congress can act to remedy that constitutional oversight. The goal: Get Bush and Cheney committed to an appropriate inpatient facility, where they can get the treatment they so desperately need. In Washington, the appropriate statutory law is already in place: If a "court or jury finds that [a] person is mentally ill and . . . is likely to injure himself or other persons if allowed to remain at liberty, the court may order his hospitalization."

I'll even serve on the jury. When it comes to averting World War III, it's really the least I can do.

rbrooks@latimescolumnists.com


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Is Rudy Certifiable? Seems, He Just Might Be.

...and, even more importantly, can we keep people who should be in the Nuthouse out of the White House, this time?

Many New York political pros believe Rudy Giuliani—former mayor, hero of 9/11, and now presidential candidate—is, quite literally, nuts.

The author asks whether Giuliani's lunatic behavior could be the ultimate campaign asset.
by Michael Wolff June 2007


There's no politician more fun to write about than Rudy Giuliani. He's your political show of shows—driven to ever greater public outlandishness by a do-anything compulsion always to be at the center of attention. At some point, when he was New York's mayor, it seemed to stop mattering to him that this attention was, for his political career, the bad kind of attention.

Politics appeared no longer to be his interest; to prove, over and over again, that it's his right—his art, even—to be at the center of attention was. Even this does not really explain the implausibility, and entertainment, of Rudy as a politician.

Rudy Giuliani and his third wife, the former Judith Nathan, who has become a colorful distraction for his campaign.

The explanation for what makes Rudy so compelling among people who know him best—including New York reporters who've covered him for a generation, and political pros who've worked for him—is simpler: he is nuts, actually mad.

Now, this line should be delivered with the proper timing (smack your head in astonishment when you deliver it). And it implies some admiration and affection: he's an original. But it is, too, a considered political diagnosis: every student of Rudy Giuliani—indeed, every New Yorker—has witnessed, and in many cases suffered, his periods of mania, political behavior that, in the end, can't have much of a rational explanation.

So, if you are not from New York, if you haven't had the pleasure of what Jack Newfield, that querulous old-school New York City columnist and reporter, called "the Full Rudy"—also the title of his 2002 book about the former mayor—you perhaps cannot appreciate our sense of emperor's-new-clothes incredulity. Despite what's in front of everybody's face—behavior that's not only in the public record but recapped on the front pages every day—becoming president could really happen for Rudy.

No, that is wrong: virtually every Full Rudy veteran expects the implosion to happen any second. It's in some bizarro parallel reality that the Rudy campaign achieves verisimilitude and even—strange, too, when you consider the cronies and hacks who surround him—appears, at times, adept.

It's a Catch-22 kind of nuttiness. What with all his personal issues—the children; the women; the former wives; Kerik and the Mob; his history of interminable, bitter, asinine hissy fits; the look in his eye; and, now, Judi!, his current, prospective, not-ready-for-prime-time First Lady—he'd have to be nuts to think he could successfully run for president. But nutty people don't run for president—certainly they don't get far if they do.

Newfield, who died in 2004, desperately, and to little avail, tried in his short, apoplectic book to demonstrate the existence of a real Rudy as opposed to the post-9/11 heroic Rudy. "Are you crazy? He's just insane," Newfield kept yelling at me over lunch one day, when I was trying to come up with a strategic explanation for Rudy's wild swings of temperament, judgment, and sense of proportion. (Similarly, Newfield quotes the New York politician Basil Paterson as saying Giuliani has "a devil in him," and Giuliani's former school chancellor Rudy Crew as diagnosing a "very, very powerful pathology," and former New York congressman Rev. Floyd Flake as seeing in Rudy, simply, a deep "mean streak.")

I argued, having voted for Rudy once, that, in certain contexts, nuttiness—for instance, his need for virtually round-the-clock media attention and affirmation—can be a positive governing approach, as well as an effective public-relations strategy. Rudy's manic domination of the city's airwaves and consciousness during New York's most disturbing crime years, when many people felt the city was beyond anybody's control, was palliative (David Dinkins, his more modest predecessor, always seemed overwhelmed). And, of course, his hysteric nature was part of what enabled him to appear so reassuring on 9/11: When everyone is crazy, he, being actually crazy, is calm. When everyone is stunned, he's expressive. (He may be the best off-the-cuff speaker in politics—conversational, witty, personal.)

Here Newfield went on, during lunch, to harangue me about the willful blindness, the consensus cowardice of the media. We (that is, we in the media) quite refuse to acknowledge the possibility that an entirely inappropriate character (a "nutso" was, I believe, Newfield's term) might be able to navigate all the hurdles and scrutiny of a campaign and actually become president. (The instances—e.g., Howard Dean, Wesley Clark—when oddball candidates do get dinged reinforces the belief that, if you make it, you deserve to make it.) The better your poll numbers are, and the closer you get to being president, the more that certifies you as being sane enough to be president (the Bush and Cheney example notwithstanding).

New York magazine, for instance, has been covering Rudy's antics for a generation. The magazine was, itself, subject to a famous blitz of Rudy loopiness: he banned from city buses an ad for the magazine with a tagline saying it was "possibly the only good thing in New York Rudy hasn't taken credit for."

But its recent cover story on the Rudy presidential phenomenon was written by a neophyte political journalist rather than one of the legions of New York reporters who've been gobsmacked over the years by Rudy (there's a whole new generation of reporters who don't know the real Rudy).

So instead of being a story about the sheer preposterousness, the zaniness and lunacy, of the notion of Rudy as president—the exceptionalness of the whole enterprise—it was about, in essence, the logic of perception.

Rudy is, necessarily, what others see him as—that was the magazine's eminently politic point.

Similarly, Newsweek, in its Rudy cover story, made the case for transformation by polls—you are what an unexpected number of people are willing to believe you are, no matter how outside the realm of credibility and reason that might be. In both critiques, Rudy is far along in the process of making himself into a realistic presidential being, a legitimate, if curious, front-runner, a man for all seasons, a plausible model—this character famous for his dramatic mood swings—of steadfastness and determination. If he doesn't implode, then, in fact, he's sound.

Page of 4 > >


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

It's McCain Again!

Will someone please get this guy some help.

Does he not realize that nothing is, in the least, funny about Iraq or Iran.

He seems delusional!

Does he really believe that what has happened during the past 6 or so year is funny?

Well, it isn't, and he is definitely not the man to lead us out of this nightmare!

McCain's humor draws criticism again

Republican presidential contender John McCain (news, bio, voting record) dismissed a demand by a prominent House Democrat that he apologize to U.S. troops in Iraq for making a joke about an explosive device, saying critics should "lighten up."

In an appearance Tuesday night on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," McCain joked that he had brought a gift for Stewart back from a recent trip to Iraq.

"What do you want to start with, the bomb Iran song or the walk through the market in Baghdad?" Stewart asked McCain, referring to two recent controversies involving statements by the Arizona senator.

"I think maybe shopping in Baghdad," McCain responded. "... I had something picked out for you, too — a little IED (improvised explosive device) to put on your desk."

On Wednesday, Rep. John Murtha (news, bio, voting record), D-Pa., demanded in a speech on the House floor that McCain apologize to troops for joking about the explosive devices that are responsible for many of the casualties in Iraq.

"Imagine a presidential candidate making a joke about IEDs when our kids are getting blown up," Murtha said.

"I don't know how to respond to that kind of hysteria," McCain said when asked about Murtha's demand during an appearance on ABC's "Good Morning America" on Thursday. "When I was in combat and tough situations we used humor all the time, and all I can say to Murtha and others is lighten up and get a life."

McCain had a similar response last week to criticism of his joking rendition at a campaign appearance in South Carolina of the opening lyrics of the Beach Boys rock classic "Barbara Ann," calling the tune "Bomb Iran" and changing the words to "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, anyway, ah ..."
Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

Israeli Insanity

Former Mossad chief: Assassinate Ahmadinejad

Iranian president 'says he wants to die a martyr so he should be sent to heaven,' Meir Amit says

Aaron Klein, WND

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should "be made to disappear from the arena," Meir Amit, a former director of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, advocated in an exclusive interview with WND.

Amit, one of the most esteemed figures in the Israeli intelligence establishment, said while he was director of the Mossad from 1963 to 1968 he regularly argued against the assassination of world leaders. But he said the case of Ahmadinejad is different.

Iranian Leader

Ahmadinejad: Israel won't dare attack us / Dudi Cohen

In interview with Spanish newspaper during visit to South America, Iranian president says, 'They are aware of Iran's strength. I believe they won't do such a stupid thing.' He reiterates Israel will vanish 'like Soviet Union,' doubts Holocaust
Full story

"Ahmadinejad is the pusher of all the Muslim world toward fanaticism and extremism. In his case, he should be made to disappear from the arena. He has said he wants to become a shahid, a martyr, so I think he should get his wish and be sent to heaven," Amit said.

Amit, now in his mid-80's, directed some of the most notorious Mossad operations while he was the organization's chief, including the running of Israeli spy Eli Cohen who penetrated top levels of the Syrian government, and the hijacking of an advance fighter plane from Iraq. The subject of multiple books and movies, Amit serves as chairman of Israel's Center for Special Studies.

Amit says he is intimately familiar with the political structure of Iran , having gone on special missions to the country during the 1960's while Israel had a relationship with Iranian leaders.

He told WND he does not advocate an Israeli military attack against Iran's suspected nuclear facilities. Instead he said Israel should adopt a defensive position, deploying a working anti-missile system to intercept possible Iranian missile attacks.

Israel this weekend successfully tested the Arrow missile defense system in its first nighttime exercise against a missile mocking an Iranian Shihab-3.

Amit termed Iran an "international threat." He said Israel and the US should work with the international community to undermine Ahmadinejad's regime and foster a popular uprising.

Ahmadinejad has called for Israel to be wiped off the map

"We know most of the younger generation in Iran is against Ahmadenejad. They should be aided. The US and international community is trying now in a light way by using broadcasting, and putting antennas in several places in Iran and also having one or two stations broadcasting real news and appropriate messages," said Amit.

"More money needs to be budgeted to this cause," Amit said.

'We're on the eve of World War III'

While the former Mossad chief did not call for a military strike against Iran, Amit said he foresees a war in the region in the future.

He said global civilization is on the verge of "World War III," a massive conflict in which the Islamic world is attempting to impose its ideology on Western nations.

"I am worried about a regional war, but also we need to look at the bigger picture and see that Islam is fighting western world and not only Israel. Look at the terror in Spain, France, London, the U.S.," said Amit.

"I call it World War III. You must look at it from this angle and treat it wider, not as a problem of terrorism here and there. The war is not being waged just by Iran and in Iraq, it's being launched by Muslims all over the world," said Amit.

Amit referenced recent terror attacks against Israel, Europe and the United States; Iran's alleged nuclear ambitions; the insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan; and recent worldwide Muslim riots.

"It looks to me like it is a kind of coordinated or contemplated problem to somehow impose the Islamic idea all over the world," Amit said.

Amit urged Western nations to "unite and work together. Unfortunately, the world is not uniting. Russia is playing its own game, and so is China."

Both China and Russia have been aiding Iran's nuclear program, which Tehran claims is intended for peaceful purposes only. In a bid to soften possible sanctions against Iran, Russia earlier proposed setting up a joint venture to enrich uranium for Iran on Russian soil.

Amit's call for the "disappearing" of Ahmadinejad comes as the Iranian leader yesterday told ABC News in an interview he was "open for talks," on his country's nuclear program. Ahmadinejad denied suggestions he sought conflict with the US, saying Iran was "trying to find ways to love people".

But Ahmadinejad's statements were punctuated by comments also made yesterday by Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Seyed Mohammad Ali Hosseini, who told Iranian state-run television Tehran will "never" agree to suspend its nuclear activities.

"The issue of suspension is not acceptable under any conditions," Hosseini said.

Amit said Iran currently is fostering region-wide instability, funding and aiding the insurgency against US troops in Iraq, directing the Lebanese Hezbollah militia and funding Palestinian terrorism.

"But I think the most serious problem is Iran developing nuclear power," Amit said.

Reprinted with permission of WorldNetDaily


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

If Democrats are Afraid, I don't blame them.....

I only hope they can rise above it and do the right thing.

Various neocons have called for Democrats who voice dissent against Bush policies in Iraq, or anywhere else, should be tried for treason, hung or exiled. I'm not kidding.

My God, in Heaven, what century are we living in? These very same cuckoo birds are brought on TeeVee constantly, as experts in one damn thing or the other, so they can basically spout the Neocon line of B.S..

Russ Feingold was right when he said that, while Democrats regularly get accused of forgetting or not learning the lessons o f 9/11, The Bushites seem to have forgotten the lessons of 1776.

I think I am beginning to understand why some of these people say and do the things they do, other than the obvious depths of their insanity. They have, for so long, painted Democrats, Liberals, Progressives...anyone to the left of Attila the Hun, as panty-waist cowards, they have come to believe it themselves.

They have no fear of any kind of retaliation from the left.

I think that this time they are pushing the envelope too damn far.

Prediction from the mountain oracle: In the next 4 or 5 decades, the word "neoconservative" will be perceived as a dirty word, more so than the word "Liberal" has been

Children, can you see that this is where lying always takes you, to a place where you can no longer remember your own lies, let alone coordinate them with others;. to a time where everything is being dragged out into the sunlight, for closer examination.

Death by a thousand cuts.


George W. Bush is the kind of man who pushes a guy under the wheels of an oncoming car, then "earnestly" vows a campaign against dangerous drivers – and he does it all with a smile.

In the past, BuzzFlash has repeatedly called attention to the likelihood that Bush has made us all victims of his sociopathology.

A key characteristic of the sociopath is to be outwardly amiable and affable, while inwardly lacking empathy or any sense of accountability or guilt.

We are now engaged in a dangerous game of chicken with Iran, based on the same sort of spurious claims and strategy of focused distraction that marked the run-up to the Iraq War. It’s an ongoing shell trick of changing mission, altering the enemy, and puddle jumping from fear to fear.


It keeps Americans from focusing on Bush’s horrendous domestic policies, the near-bankruptcy of the U.S., an administration of endemic corruption and nepotism, and a foreign policy that has advanced no further than the tactics of the Roman Empire, except that the Romans were most often led into wars by leaders whose ruthlessness was at least matched by their competence.
All we have are leaders who excel at nursing their own egos, power, and financial well-being, with the rest of us being so much cannon fodder.

And their only real talent is the ability to endlessly lie and deceive.

As Carl Bernstein recently noted in a "Frontline" interview: "I think what we're talking about with the Bush administration is a far different matter in which disinformation, misinformation and unwillingness to tell the truth -- a willingness to lie both in the Oval Office, in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, in the office of the vice president, the vice president himself -- is something that I have never witnessed before on this scale."


It will be the work of investigative reporters to record all the different and contradictory "missions" and "goals" that Bush has used as an excuse for being in Iraq. The very word "mission" bestows some sort of noble gesture and task upon an utterly disastrous and failed policy, for which Bush will assume no real responsibility.

The only real missions in Iraq are to preserve the power bases of Cheney and Bush, war profiteering, and to control vast reserves of oil. As for democracy in Iraq, that was always one of the sham goals used to goad Americans into support for a war that they would never otherwise support, without the non-existent WMDs and all.


In Gulf War I, Bush the First claimed to be freeing both Kuwait and the Shias from Saddam’s cruel rule. Then Bush the First abandoned the Shias to be slaughtered by Saddam. Now Bush the Second is targeting the same Shias – and through them Iran – while supporting, in part, the Sunnis, the minority sect in the artificial nation of Iraq, who dominated power through Saddam. Meanwhile, they are scrambling to find enough puppet Shias to provide the facade of a functioning government.

This is only one tiny fraction of the diabolical absurdity of the Bush/Cheney fiasco in Iraq, where so-called "facts" and "goals" change on a daily, if not hourly basis.

Indeed, just shortly after the Busheviks held an "anonymous" high-level military news conference to claim that the Iranian government was behind attacks on GIs in Iraq – a charge that was refuted in unprecedented fashion by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (forcing Bush to backtrack in his February 14th "press conference") – the Pentagon revealed something truthful for a change.

A week after claiming that a helicopter crashed due to mechanical failure (which is their usual excuse for the rash of helicopter downings until the news dies down), they admitted it had been shot down by -- Iranians? No. By Shias? No. By Sunnis? Yes. Excuse us! According to the Associated Press, "At least seven U.S. helicopters have crashed or been forced down under hostile fire since Jan. 20."

And the Sunnis in Iraq, as with Al Qaeda, derive their major support from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, not Iran.


The truth is that polls posted in the likes of the Washington Post reveal that the majority of Iraqis support attacks on American troops. What is Bush going to do, kill all the people he claims to be liberating? Now that Saddam is dead, they want to be liberated from Bush.

In this particular helicopter downing, seven GIs perished. The pilot of the Medivac chopper was a 28-year-old female Naval Academy graduate from Massachusetts, Jennifer Harris. She was one week away from returning stateside after three tours of duty in Iraq.

Jennifer Harris, a heroine who patriotically believed in the "Commander-in-Chief," is being buried this week in Swampscott, Mass.


A news report of the great sociopath’s most recent farce of a "news conference," included this phrase: "President Bush is cautioning members of Congress against taking any legislative action that could harm U.S. troops in Iraq."

Bush and Cheney continue to throw our troops under the wheels of cars and warn the Democrats not to try to save them from being run over.

If this isn’t the definition of murderous intent, what is?


A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
BuzzFlash Note: Following the usual arc of the Cheney/Bush pathology, they will let the Democrats wade into the water and pass their vote of no confidence. Then Cheney and Bush will start the long-awaited war with Iran and declare that our GIs are in "harm's way" and Congress would be undercutting them if they try to stop either the war with Iran or Iraq.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

The Bushites MUST Be Removed From Power. NOW!

We cannot wait!

Neither can the rest of the world!

While Congress dithers over semantics, WWIII is beginning and it is likely to be Nuclear

by Dave Lindorff

This is madness!

I wrote last September that Bush was gearing up for war with Iran, as evidenced by the moving up of the deployment date of the carrier group headed by the recently re-fueled and re-armed USS Eisenhower, some of whose crewmembers had leaked that its mission was to attack Iran.
At the time, there was considerable skepticism expressed about the article, which appeared in the Nation's online edition.

Now, four months later, it is widely assumed in Europe that the U.S. is planning to attack Iran, and even in the U.S., members of Congress are openly talking about their concern that Bush is planning to attack Iran.

Does anyone think this is lunacy?

The U.S. is deeply mired in a losing war in Iraq, and is also losing Afghanistan to a resurgent Taliban. The Pentagon is scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to come up with the measly 21,500 additional troops Bush has vowed to send to Iraq, and the 4,000 troops that his commanders in Afghanistan are asking for.

Iran, meanwhile, poses no immediate threat to the U.S. But it does have a huge, battle-hardened army, much better equipped than Saddam Hussein's rag-tag troops, and equipped with some very sophisticated weaponry courtesy of Russia and China. Any U.S. forces that went into Iran could expect to take heavy casualties, and could hardly hope to conquer a nation with a population bigger than Iraq and Afghanistan combined, a population that, unlike Iraq's, can be expected to rise as one against a U.S. invasion.

Even if Iran is meddling in Iraq, it hardly seems like attacking that country is likely to put a halt to that kind of thing. Indeed, attacking Iran would be more likely to lead to an escalation of Iranian efforts to hobble U.S. forces in Iraq, something Tehran could easily do through its Iraqi

Shia Allies.

Nor would attacking Iran put an end to that nation's nuclear program, which is spread out, carefully hidden, and in many cases, located in underground bunkers. Nuclear experts agree that an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities would only slow down its efforts, not end them, and moreover, would encourage the country to redouble its efforts to get the Bomb and achieve the kind of protection against future attack that countries with the bomb have.

Oh. I haven't mentioned the economic disaster part, have I?

Iran is the second-largest oil producing country in the world, and it borders the entire eastern shore of the Persian Gulf, through which a third of the world's oil passes every year. If it were attacked, all of Iran's oil, and most of the oil produced by Kuwait, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, would be taken out of circulation indefinitely. Oil prices would soar way past $100/barrel, and maybe past $200 a barrel, causing a U.S. and a global depression.So why are we even talking about this?We're talking about this because the President of the United States, the Vice President, and the neoconservative political gang that has brought the nation six years of war, destruction, and Constitution-wrecking, is under attack, and this cabal of madmen and madwomen has decided that chaos, death, and destruction offer the best hope of salvation.

We are, it appears, about to witness the American equivalent of Hitler's suicide orders to the German people as he scurried to his bunker in Berlin.

What to do?

The answer is simple.It is time for the Congress and the American people to act.

If senators and representatives pass a resolution barring the use of any military forces against Iran, or the expenditure of any funds for war against Iran, Bush will not be able to push the country over the precipice. American military leaders would have reason to ignore any orders that would put them in violation of the law of the land.T

his would be a historic moment, a reassertion by Congress of its Constitutional primacy in matters of war and peace.Members of Congress should follow up that move by initiating impeachment proceedings against this whacko immediately.Congress must not duck its patriotic duty. President Clinton was impeached for a little blowjob. This president wants to blow a hell of a lot more than an intern.

An attack on Iran would be an international crime under the Nuremberg Charter, which calls the invasion of a country that doesn't pose an immediate threat a "Crime Against Peace." But even aside from such matters, anyone with a lick of sense knows that it would be crazy to go into another even larger war while the American military is completely tied down in two other desperate situations.

The whole Bush administration has clearly gone stark raving mad, and is willing to sacrifice the nation for its own short-term gain.This cannot be allowed to happen.No War against Iran!Impeach the President now!

DAVE LINDORFF is co-author, with Barbara Olshansky, of "The Case forImpeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office" (St. Martin's Press, 2006). His work may be found atwww.thiscantbehappening.net and at www.counterpunch.org

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.