Office of the Independent Blogger

CIA Director Porter Goss has resigned as the CIA Director. There is speculation that it’s because he’s involved in a prostitution scandal, and additional in-fighting with other Bush appointees. My speculation is less convoluted: as he himself once said, he just wasn’t qualified.

CIA Director is the most important job in Washington aside from President and Presidential Chief of Staff, and here’s to hoping that Bush doesn’t cross the Porter-line again. Qualifications matter, particularly when you’re advising a man who needs the best advice he can get, and they matter moreso when you’re replacing a hack.

Leading up to World War II, the Empire of Japan pretended to be in pursuit of diplomatic relations with the United States. The Empire had representatives in Washington at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack who were intended to keep the Administration offguard. It was a military maneuver in what they believed the best interest of the Japanese nation, and it worked. Could Saudi Arabia be feeling not just the United States but the entire world, not with their intentions regarding war and peace but about their oil output? The Globalist urges that we re-assess the claims of petroleum peddlers, and it’s a particularly stirring article. It definitely asks valid questions, and makes you wonder why the petrol pimps in the President’s party don’t decide that the addiction to oil must be broken.

But then you remember that they’re petroleum pimps, and the question comes full circle.

Energetic countries need energy, and America, being a vital nation, needs electricity to pump its motor. Or is that oil? Brazil does it with sugar ethanol, but then again, they don’t have petroleum pimps and negligent mothers leading their country, or at least that’s the paraphrased point made most recently by Thomas Friedman, which led him to ask if a third party could solve the oil crisis. Surely it could draw much needed attention to it, with a serious candidate, but third parties aren’t fit to govern. That counts Ross Perot, as well.

In Massachussetts, there is a wind farm being proposed. Wealthy businessmen see it as a threat for one reason or another (perhaps they think it’ll harness too much wind for them to be able to ever go wind-surfing again?) and they’re trying to kill it. Their closest, strongest ally? Ted Kennedy. A shame when an energy proposal gets brought down by a Democrat, but he knows all about fighting energy proposals: he helped kill Carter’s proposals in the late seventies, after all.

Joe Biden has a plan for Iraq. It is, simply put, a completely counter productive and absurd proposition. Biden’s plan is to divide the country into three regions, one for the Shiites, the Sunnis and the Kurds. He proposes that each have its own military but that they all fall together under the jurisdiction of the federal Iraqi government. If the anti-war critics greatest argument today about the Iraq War is that it’s caused, or will cause, a Civil War, this is senseless remedy to that, increasing the prospect of War tenfold. But that’s not all that’s wrong with it, and I’ll let Dennis Byrne take it from here.

Biden pops up with this lunacy just as Norui al-Maliki, Iraqi’s new prime Minister is trying to put together a cabinet under a three-week deadline and form the long-sought unity government. Biden’s timing couldn’t have been more self-serving or destructive. Everything Biden does is self-serving, so no need to dwell on that. As for destructive: the Bush administration long has been pressuring Iraqi factions to work better together. Their joint decision now to replace an inept prime minister with al-Malik is a major milestone on the road to Iraqi independence and self-government, an accomplishment surely as significant as crafting its new constitution and holding successful elections.

This step toward overcoming centuries of hatred and bloody warfare apparently isn’t all that stunning for Biden, whose op-ed virtually ignored this accomplishment. Nor is it newsworthy for the American media, which suffered the indignity of having to mention it at all. Constitution, elections, unified government; skeptical politicians and media said none of it would happen. And after each happened, they quickly moved on to find the next thing “that’ll never happen.” For the Iraqis, this process requires huge gulps of pride, self-sacrifice and an admirable tolerance for danger. Every Iraqi participating in this process risks getting his throat cut. So, along comes Biden’s wrench in the works, as if just another form of American abandonment of Iraq is a serious and credible alternative. Iraqi unifiers now can only wonder if America will betray them.

Here’s hoping that they pay less attention to Biden then does our fawning media. […] [W]hat a proposal. Of course, it includes the threadbare progressive formula to “convene a regional conference,” so that everyone can to agree to “respect” Iraq’s borders. Be sure to pick up your Hello nametags at the registration desk and get to know your neighbors at this evening’s meet-and-greet. What is it with liberals that they see themselves as global event planners who believe that “if only” we can get Iran, Syria and other belligerents to “sit down together,” we can “work out our differences.” Okay, that’s just a small part of his proposal, which essentially would take apart a country that the Iraqis are trying to put together. Biden says it will work, just like it did in Bosnia.

Aside from Iraq not being Bosnia, the plan has a few flaws. Consider: He says Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite regions would be responsible for their internal affairs and each have their own “internal security,” i.e. army, I guess. Baghdad would become a “federal zone, while densely populated areas of mixed populations would receive both multisectarian and international police protection.” That’s such a fine solution, why doesn’t he propose it for, say, Jerusalem as well.

Actually, the idea of a federal zone, protected by an international force, sounds familiar: It’s what we’re already doing in larger Iraq, Joe. Or trying to do, but pretty much by ourselves, not that we haven’t asked for some help. So, what are we supposed to believe–that we could get a truly international armed presence to police violent Baghdad, any more successfully than we’ve been able to get a truly international force to protect the more peaceful hinterland? What do you suppose France will say when Biden comes knocking for 20,000 grenadiers to patrol Sadr City? If Bush’s strategy is fanciful, Biden’s is absurd.

Of course, I concur with the article. I thought Biden’s idea to be ridiculous, and filled with the logical holes that I abhorr. Logical holes, however, seem to be in abundance in recent days as sensical yarn seems to be out of stock at the local conventional wisdom stores. Ed Koch writes today that we should prepare for Iran. By getting out of Iraq.

Maybe I’m mistaken, but if there’s ever to be a war with the Iranians, it’s helpful for military purposes to be right next door to the Iranians. Does Koch expect a war to be waged against Iran using only air strikes? Perhaps he thinks we should strike the Iranians with nuclear weapons and let God sort them out. I don’t buy either case, much like I’m not a proponent of pre-emptively striking Iran. But if we’re going to “prepare” for Iran, then the first step is to stay in Iraq. Maybe Mr. Koch doesn’t remember the concept of “deterrence,” but it’s less likely, not more likely, that Iran won’t strike Israel if they know that retaliation is right around the corner. “Retaliation around the corner” means being in Iraq. It’s one of the many reasons to stay in Iraq.

If Biden’s plan is fanciful and Koch’s absurd, then USA Today’s is naive and blaise. The plan for Iran? A non-aggression treaty with Iran, in exchange for a no-nuclear weapons pledge from the Mullahs. Because that’s worked so well before.

Ultimately, I think containment and deterrence are the answers, although war shouldn’t be ruled out. “Containment” and “deterrence” don’t mean promising not to attack the Iranians or leaving their neighborhood lest they shoot at our soldiers. It means containing them with our army and deterring with it, too. Do Biden, Koch and Today take their own ideas seriously? If they were comedians, they’d be joking about their plans with a deadpan expression. As it stands, they’re completely serious, and that’s a tad disheartening.

Now, tangentially, let me direct you to this piece about Al Gore’s resurrection. I think there’s a Plan amongst some in the media to do everything they can to urge Gore to run again. If there isn’t, then by all means, read it to see the Al Gore plan to save the world from environmental ruin.

Fred Phelps is the notorious right-wing nutjob who leads a movement that can be called the “God Hates” movement. Essentially, Phelps finds things he finds unpleasant morally, decides that certain people or nations approve of it, and declares that God hates them. Originally, he made a name for himself chanting “God hates fags” but since, he’s made a name for himself chanting “God hates fags” at the funerals of dead solders from Iraq. You see, his logic is that, because the military doesn’t round homosexuals up, soldiers deserve to die. Recently, some states have passed laws curbing these people from being able to protest at cemetaries and funerals, and now, the ACLU is joining the fight. On behalf of Fred Phelps.

I’m not a Civil Liberties absolutist, nor am I a strict constructionist of the Constitution. One of the things that I find quite ironic about absolutists and civil libertarians is the hole in their logic and an obvious lack of intellectual honesty. Let’s look at those who argue that the First Amendment is absolute and freedom of speech complete, those who would take their lawyers into court to argue that Fred Phelps should have the right to assail dead soldiers at their funerals because the First Amendment says so. These are the same people who would stretch the Constitution beyond its literal text in regard to things like, oh, the right to privacy. Don’t get me wrong — I am a supporter of Griswold. I just believe that none of the Amendments should be taken to their literal extreme. I guess that makes me more like David Souter than Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Robert Bork, and that’s fine by me.

Iran sent a message to rest of the world today, and it was clear, unequivocal and ridiculous, per usual. “America attacks Iran, and we will attack Israel.” From that, a quick question must be asked. What if Germany attacks Iran, would the Iranians then attack Israel and blame the violence on the Germans? Because that would be ironic and absurd rather than just absurd. It would be ironic because, regardless of who attacks them, it appears that the Iranians are intent on committing the Holocaust they deny ever happened.

A half-century year old woman is being deployed to Iraq to fight the War. It might just be a mistake to send a woman on the verge of retiring from the military to Iraq, but who am I to second-guess the decisions of the Donald (Rumsfeld)? For that matter, is it really in my place to criticize the Supreme Court for not only hearing Anna Nicole Smith’s money-grubbing appeal and ruling in her favor while ignoring plenty of valid cases? Maybe there’s a hole in my logical thought process, but I don’t think real cases should be turned down for this.

Unless David Suiter thinks he suits her and wants to use the Court to court her, then that suits me just swell! Actually, it doesn’t. The Supreme Court dropped the ball in taking this case instead of a different one. End of story.

If history is our guide, the Russian nation will forever gather all the information it needs to make a decision only to make the wrong one. Sometimes it seems that the Russian nation is destined to be known for making the wrong decisions, like a geopolitical Inspector Clouseau. When presented with the end of Czar rule, they turned to the Bolsheviks. When presented with an end to Soviet Dictatorship, they turned to Boris Yeltsin. Deciding that Democracy and a form of capitalism weren’t good enough, they turned to a dictatorship again (in Vladimir Putin) and love it.

Now, faced with significant American aid to their economy, along with a sitting American government known for its love of the Russian state and admiration for its present leadership, they begin fearing “the West” (read: America) and thinking up a million reasons not to trust America. Russia’s always been an odd state with the character of a mutt, always searching for new territory to mark but backing away when another dog growls. When their leadership isn’t a barking dog, it’s a bear. When that bear hibernates for good, there’s always a badger lying around somewhere pretending that Communist Dictatorship is dead but bringing it back to power.

For years, the Russian state has rushed to do everything it can to court troublemakers and coddle dictators, whether that meant providing them air defense systems or assisting them in preparing for War with America. Now Russia talks of a “Values Gap” between the United States and the Russians. In a sense, he’s right and he’s wrong. There doesn’t appear to be much of a values gap between Putin and Bush, who both love fishing, guns and domestic spying. On the other hand, America isn’t a nasty Dictatorship. It all evens out.

Russians aren’t just happy to engage Iran and Iran under the cover of darkness and on soft sweet beds in Switzerland. They love the Chinese dictatorship. Whoever told you that opposites attract was lying, son. We can look to the nature of Iraq, China and Russia — the unsavory threesome that constitute the world’s greatest roadblock to international cooperation and the spread of human rights — to see that the eyes of a dictator rest best alongside gators.

Despite the Russian rush to hold hands with those who’d do Americans harm, George Bush spoke to Vladimir Putin today on the telephone about the need to prevent the Iranians from gaining nuclear weapons, among other things. Afterward, the Press Secretary told reporters that the two leaders are “united” in their goal of preventing Tehran from going nuclear. Keeping negotiations going is one thing, and to that end, it’s fair enough to temper one’s criticism of another nation in public. But what the Bush White House is doing and has done with Russia by refusing to be critical or acknowledge that they’re an impediment to the world’s security makes me think that, someday, George Bush will declare that he did not have sexual relations with that Dictator.

Until, of course, the Iranians show the world the blue dress, taken from Vladimir Putin’s closet, of course.

Perhaps I’m rushin’ to conclusions on Russia, but I find their political leadership and sense of politics to be backward, frankly. And the facts support that. A nation that goes from dictatorship to a reasonably liberal democracy to a dictatorship isn’t moving forward. A nation that refuses to support the free world against a third world theocracy hellbent on gaining nuclear weapons, joins the worst nations on Earth in supplanting American, English and French efforts wherever they appear, is not our friend. It’s too bad that Bush loves Putin more than reality, and would rather get soft than tough.

Headlines in the newspaper don’t typically make me laugh. But I’ve gotta admit, the Chicago Sun-Times’ article, “Tony’s New Job? That’s Snow Biz!” made me smile. It’s a good piece, and it gets it right on why Snow is a good choice to be the Press Secretary.

Time magazine today let loose its list of a hundred influential Americans, and in several cases allowed guest writers to pen the profile. In some cases, like with Sandra Day O’Connor writing about John Roberts, it’s cute and fits. In others, like the fellating of John McCain by one Ralph Nader, it isn’t quite as fitting. To be pithy: McCain loves war, supports Bush, and is Conservative on everything except his stance on the regulation of automobiles and campaign finance reform. Because of the last two, Nader loves him.

This is akin to a vegetarian Frenchmen calling Hitler a good man because he happened to be nice to his dog and didn’t eat meat.

George Bush’s profile is here, and there’s one on Al Gore here. Tell you the truth, Gore’s piece annoyed me because it focused so much on the fact that George H.W. Bush used to call Gore “Ozone Man” instead of writing about the fact that, oh, Al Gore is doing big things. The article I found myself most looking forward to reading was about Ehud Olmert, the Prime Minister of Israel. Alas, his piece is nothing special. Angela Merkel’s is nice enough, and I’m glad to see that she’s successful.

I’ve been critical of Time in the past. My relationship with the magazine soured a couple years ago when they ran a cover of Ann Coulter and also a big piece on her. I was quite annoyed by it because there didn’t seem to be a single reason to have run it and, frankly, the piece seemed to be made to blow smoke up her notoriously short skirt. After thinking it over, I decided that someone on their editorial board had a desire to date the dottering dunderhead. Ever since, the magazine has bothered me, and today, with their list of influential people, they sure made it up to me by counting the Dixie Chicks, all three of them as one person (perhaps they decided to combine their IQs?) in their 100 list. It’s not 2003 anymore, and there’s no reason to have counted them. Aside from, perhaps, a lonely Editor?

Briefly, I apologize for the lack of posts yesterday and if you’ve had any problems with the page loading. The site’s undergoing some maintenance, but will be okay soon. To business!

Saturday night was the White House correspondent’s dinner, the annual event where the press throws a party for itself and the President is expected to make jokes about himself before someone else gets to make jokes about them. The dinner has a delightful history of offending the President, something which happened as recently as the Clinton years when Don Imus devoted an hour to making jokes about the President’s wife. The next year, Al Franken quipped, “Here’s my impersonation of Don Imus at FDR’s dinner: ‘For those of you listening on the radio, the President is a cripple.’” Last night was Stephen Colbert’s chance to call the President a cripple, and he sure ran with it. Among his jokes were these gems: ” I believe that the government that governs best is a government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.”

Truth be told, I saw the comedic value of most of his jokes except that one. I thought that was a classless joke, and from what I can tell, it seems to have been the one to offend Bush most, hopefully for the same reason it bothered me. You see, when the country’s at war, I want the country to win. And when the military is rebuilding a nation that has been devastated by war, I want the military to succeed. When a country is made better off, and children now have schools, and people now don’t worry about being gassed by their government, I want that to be praised, not ignored or belittled as too little — as nothing.

I thought Colbert’s jokes were good, and I especially enjoyed the wisecracks about the Valerie Plame affair. That is something worthy of satirical jabs, like it would be if Bush were caught drinking vodka out of a coffee mug in a meeting with the Swiss Ambassador. But Colbert cracked jokes about reality, such as this one which came after advising the President to ignore his low poll numbers after saying they were based on reality, adding, “reality has a well-known liberal bias.” Sadly, there’s no “reality basis” in Iraq’s case, because Iraq is a mess, and we should pull out with our M-16s between our legs because we’re fueling terrorism and we’ve turned Iraq into but a shell of its former great self.

Bush’s comedic input last night was restricted to talking with a stage double. At least it wasn’t Laura Bush’s “my husband masturbates horses because he’s dumb” routine from last year. I thought last year’s event was symbolic for the haplessness of the President’s situation, since no properly-functioning White House would allow the First Lady to tell an audience that her husband masturbates horses, even in jest. This year’s correspondent’s dinner was representative of the fact that the Presidency is occupied by a man with less political capital than Jimmy Carter in his darkest days. Could you imagine someone cracking these jokes about Iraq two years ago, three — last year, even? — to Bush’s face? Or can you see someone telling Bush that they’re ashamed of him and his leadership? Bush’s influence is at its lowest ebb, and that is probably the most meaningful thing to be seen last night.