I'm not going to link it directly, but via Boing Boing, one Michael Goldfarb is making the case that progressives who read Daily Kos are like tweeners playing Dungeons & Dragons in mom's basement. Now, the knee jerk reaction here would be to state "But I'm not playing D & D in my mother's basement!" But you know what? I'm not going to play that role and I'm not going to be nice.

Mr. Goldfarb was one of the original PNAC boys, the lovable neoconservative guys and gals who dreamed up and then whined for an invasion of Iraq starting in the late 1990s, claiming it would be decisive, quick, cheap, and easy. If that sounds familiar, it's because these are the very same opportunistic assholes who used a bogus WMD threat to stampede a spooked nation into their cherished war on Iraq in the traumatic aftermath of 9-11. When the wheels fell off their experiment and it ground to a brutal halt on the streets of reality, true to neocon form, they scattered and ran hitherto, pointing fingers at the CIA, the Democrats, blaming anyone and everyone else for their giant, massive, bloody Baghdad fuck-up, once it became clear what a colossal fuck up it was.

Mr. Goldfarb, please accept this with all the venom and hostility you can conceive of: D & D players don't scare me. They hang out quietly in dorm rooms and apartments playing their RP game hurting no one. You and your friends at PNAC on the other hand stand guilty of practicing gross fatal global negligence to a degree so grotesque I would not have thought it possible in this modern nation. You and your friends started a war you cannot finish, now you blame it on those who warned against it, you did this at a cost to date of over four thousand US soldiers' lives and growing every week, tens of thousands wounded, a hundred thousand or more dead, innocent Iraqi civilians¹; all bought and paid for by almost one-trillion US tax dollars. You started this bloody cluster-fuck against the wrong nation and, in the process, helped allow the masterminds of 9-11 get away scot free.

Mr. Goldfarb, Mission Accomplished, sir.

Better to play D & D well as an adolescent, than play a shitty game of Risk as an adult. Yes, you played Risk, Mr. Goldfarb, only you played with real blood and guts, just not of course, your own. You played Risk, Mr. Goldfarb, you mendacious twit, and you play it poorly, and you have lost. May whatever deity you worship have mercy on what's left of your rotten soul.

Around the time of the first Gulf War in 1991 I attended an unintentionally hilarious meeting of Iraqi exile groups in DC. There was talk in Washington of overthrowing Saddam Hussein via Iraqi exiles, and this meeting had been called to put their differences aside and forge a united strategy toward that goal. A Middle East historian friend and I decided to drive into DC that evening to have a look for ourselves. We wanted to see whether these exiles were still living up to their long established reputation for being bitterly divided and dysfunctional. Overthrowing a government is a pretty big step. Though in no way connected to the policy-making crowd, we figured as citizens we ought to inform ourselves before the US started making definitive moves to bring chaos to Iraq, of all places.

Dozens of exiles showed up from across the spectrum of political groups; my friend remarked that all the usual suspects were in attendance. "This is going to get ugly," he predicted. The agenda lasted for all of a minute or two. Almost as soon as the meeting got under way, it was interrupted by a long and impassioned rant (by a Kurdish exile, if I recall rightly). Another Iraqi jumped up and began slanging off the first guy. The floodgates opened. From every corner of the room came accusations and counter-accusations. The occasional call for unity was shouted down. An Iraqi sitting nearby looked at us nervously, trying to assess how we were taking this in. A moment later he inserted himself into one of the shouting matches. After about 90 minutes of this mayhem we had to flee; it was all we could do to stifle our laughter amidst these zealots.

I was reminded of this episode yesterday by the reaction here to a post about Francis Fukuyama's latest attempt to obscure his history of backing the neocon project to overthrow Hussein. In an op-ed Fukuyama twitted George Bush for legitimizing "regime change" by invading Iraq, without however acknowledging that for years he'd advocated exactly that as a member of PNAC. A suprising number of commenters sprang to his defense. Didn't I know that Fukuyama had broken with the neocons some time ago? Some here are even credulous about his unsupported claim that he came out in opposition to the invasion way back in 2002 - although he's on record as supporting the decision to invade fully two months after the invasion.

It seems that for some on the left, merely expressing regret after the fact for having been proved disastrously wrong (with a healthy dash of historical revisionism) makes up for the years Fukuyama spent advocating for an illegal invasion of a sovereign country. You see it shows that in contrast to the other neocons he's got some sense, don't you know.

Except it doesn't and nothing can. Setting aside Fukuyama's embrace of international lawlessness, what about those Iraqi exiles he backed as the means to replace Hussein? On Sept. 20, 2001 he signed the PNAC Letter to George Bush, which called for Hussein's overthrow "even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the [9/11] attack".

Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism. The United States must therefore provide full military and financial support to the Iraqi opposition. American military force should be used to provide a "safe zone" in Iraq from which the opposition can operate. And American forces must be prepared to back up our commitment to the Iraqi opposition by all necessary means.

By "opposition" PNAC meant the Iraqi exile groups. The letter was issued immediately after 19 hours of talks organized by Paul Wolfowitz to advance the neocon agenda. The meetings were conducted by circumventing the State Department, though Ahmed Chalabi was on hand to advocate for a US invasion to back a takeover by Iraqi exile groups.

There is no excuse for any who signed the 2001 PNAC letter. For more than a decade, any moderately well informed observer in Washington knew that the Iraqi exiles were a bunch of clowns. If the PNAC gang were unaware of their reputation, then the first step should have been to learn more about the exile groups before trying to tie US foreign policy to these jokers. Therefore every single one of these PNAC signatories is on record as a fool or a knave. Nothing any  of them says about foreign policy should ever be taken seriously. And notice that one of these is John McCain's chief adviser on foreign policy. Nobody on the left should be giving any of this gang the benefit of the doubt.

William Kristol, Gary Bauer, Jeffrey Bell, William J. Bennett, Jeffrey Bergner, Eliot Cohen, Seth Cropsey, Midge Decter, Thomas Donnelly, Aaron Friedberg, Hillel Fradkin, Francis Fukuyama, Frank Gaffney, Jeffrey Gedmin, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Charles Hill, Bruce P. Jackson, Eli S. Jacobs, Michael Joyce, Donald Kagan, Robert Kagan, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Charles Krauthammer, John Lehman, Clifford May, Richard Perle, Martin Peretz, Norman Podhoretz, Randy Scheunemann, Gary Schmitt, William Schneider, Jr., Richard H. Shultz, Henry Sokolski, Stephen J. Solarz, Vin Weber, Leon Wieseltier, Marshall Wittmann

Francis Fukuyama in the WSJ is trying once again to elide his history as a neocon and retrospectively align himself instead with the critics of everything he once stood for. Turns out he warned a friend, in private, that invading Iraq might not work out so well - he says. This bit is particularly hilarious:

The Bush administration this week rebuked Russia for its disproportionate military intervention in Georgia; many rightly suspect Moscow's real goal is regime change of the pro-Western, democratic government in Tbilisi. But who set the most recent precedent for a big power intervening to change a regime it didn't like, without the sanction of the U.N. Security Council or any other legitimating international body?

Here is Fukuyama 10 years ago in the PNAC Letter to President Bill Clinton on Iraq (PDF).

We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power...

As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat...

In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy...

We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.

I wonder how that campaign to ingratiate himself with an Obama administration is going for him?

It's Sunday, which means my local newspaper feels compelled to assault me with Charles Krauthammer.  In this week's column, Krauthammer is – SURPRISE! -- attacking Barack Obama.

In a stunning upset, Barack Obama this week won the Iraq primary. When Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki not once but several times expressed support for a U.S. troop withdrawal on a timetable that accorded roughly with Obama's 16-month proposal, he did more than legitimize the plan. He relieved Obama of a major political liability by blunting the charge that, in order to appease the MoveOn left, Obama was willing to jeopardize the astonishing success of the surge and risk losing a war that is finally being won.
Original column in the Washington Post

He goes on (and so shall we), but buried deep in the article, echoes of an old familiar friend ring out.  Well, not exactly "friend", unless you're counting the kind of friend who steals your tools, breaks your windows, sprays weed killer on your trees, unleashes a sewer back-up on the neighborhood, and drives over the neighborhood children in a drunken stupor.  Come on inside if you dare.

McCain headed the parent org that was the primary fundraising entity for the PNAC.  This is disturbing news I did not know about. Notice too... he does not answer this man's question, but changes the subject to how he and Lieberman brought about the first 9/11 Commission.  

I would have liked to have heard a direct answer.  But that wasn't to be.  We can only speculate as to why this question was asked in the context it was giving information about McCain's PNAC affiliation.

Its important to note however, that McCain's history working for the PNAC fundraising efforts dates back to 1994.   I just think this is worthwhile information.

This country had a jackass (sorry, I'm one of the 28%ers at the other end of the scale) installed as President and had him re-elected so the first pre-emptive war could be launched and implemented per the Project For a New American Century. The stink emanating from the FISA bill this week is the poisonous and radioactive fallout from a neoconservative agenda to dominate the world primarily through force and placing diplomacy on the back burner. The 2008 election is shaping up to be a chance to be sure the fallout is limited.

This is the title of a remarkable article on Truthout today about Mccain's role within and ties to PNAC, and the future role of a McCain-led America in world affairs.

I have been troubled lately with all of the remarks about a Colombo-like Mccain as being incoherent, and reminded forcefully of the same Bush Alfred E. Newman act that led the American public to be disarmed by misunderstanding the exact and sinister nature of W's ideas.

So it was with great interest that i followed Elliott Cohen's argument that McCain would move further towards the insanity of the past seven years.

John McCain has long been a major player in a radical militaristic group driven by an ideology of global expansionism and dominance attained through perpetual, pre-emptive, unilateral, multiple wars. The credo of this group is "the end justifies the means," andthe end of establishing the United States as the world's sole superpower justifies, in its estimation, anything from military control over the information on the Internet to the use of genocidal biological weapons.

In the glitz and the limelight of the Obama nomination, many of us have had a feeling in our wooden leg that something wasn't quite right.

Then I read this article from Patrick Cockburn at the Independant, via Huffpo.

Obama's nod notwithstanding, why aren't the netroots going crazy over this? Five hundred plus comments at the huffington post were all it could muster, mainly from conspiracy wingnuts like myself. Then Hillary says she won't seek the v.p. (duh), and it's a feeding frenzy. Clearly this symptom of focusing almost solely on identity in politics is threatening to destroy the best parts of Senator Obama's candidacy and tie his hands should he get to office.

Yup, guys like Newt Gingrich know what's good for America.  More terror attacks.

"This is ... one of the great tragedies of the Bush administration," Gingrich continued. "The more successful they've been at intercepting and stopping bad guys, the less proof there is that we're in danger. And therefore, the better they've done at making sure there isn't an attack, the easier it is to say, 'Well, there never was going to be an attack anyway.' And it's almost like they should every once in a while have allowed an attack to get through just to remind us."

What a patriotic Republican hero this man is!  It's a shame he didn't run for President!

have you ever wondered why the media never talks about the large number of people Bush brought into his administration and use it to bolster the narrative that they were intent on Iraq before 9/11?
There's a considerable amount of evidence that McClellan's book supports about how ideology driven this administration was even before 9/11

Want evidence that the Project for a New American Century was not quite the success its founders envisioned?                                                              
                                                 
Sometimes, you gotta sit back, smile and enjoy Victoria day.

PNAC's website.  Enjoy!                                                              

For those of you who want to go there the old way...

www.newamericancentury.org

We often talk about individuals on this site, but less attention has been given to movements, and networks.  We know that certain individuals decide things, that they testify certain ways, etc., but we don't speak about the network.  Much of what the administration says is indefensible, including Tony Snow's snowballing (when he was 'in power'), but in Tony Snow and, with others, who is 'the voice'?  And is 'the voice' the criminal?  Or is there a larger movement, a network?   I believe the evidence suggests the latter.

When Tenet spoke at a university, shortly before he left the CIA, he looked very evasive and suspicious to me, but then, I later see Tenet do something else, after he leaves, and seems to be an intriguing, collegiate guy.  Mueller, with the FBI, as well, has had his fair share of suspicious acts, as far as I'm concerned, but I see him talk about something else and I think, this guy seems on the level.  

I think that's what makes the case for something larger.  And when you start to look closer, you see a pattern, a web of people, interconnected, and an ideology that fuels it, based on the religious-like system of Leo Strauss, using many of the propaganda techniques hammered out over the early part of the 20th century.  

One of the greatest fears people have about the last year of a Bush presidency is that military action will be taken against Iran. We know that the neo-conservatives want it and we know that Bush is even talking about how he signs vetoes to "stay relevant".

The prospect is a frightening one but it has been on the back burner now for some time. The 2008 election has diverted our attention to white grandmothers, pastors and poll results. But when the issue re-surfaces as it has over the past few days I can't help but get a chill up my spine that the propaganda campaign may once again be in full swing.

Calls have gotten louder amongst hawks calling for the U.S. to do something about the Quds forces in Iran. Just today Joe Lieberman was on TV talking about the "real possibility" of a bombing campaign against the Iranians and John Bolton has been calling for a bombing campaign consistently these days.

With a President who has nothing to lose (in his mind) and a GOP nominee who signs about bombing Iran to the tune of the beach boys... is it time to start freaking out about the Kyle-Lieberman amendment and the possibility of war? Remember, the Republican Guard are all "terrorists" now thanks to Senators like Hillary Clinton.

OneForce gets you established in the proper lineup, tells you to hold the spot while he rustles up some beers and then cuts an eye-watering silent fart, entirely unbeknownst to you. As soon as it hits your nostrils you know precisely what he’s done to you. You look around. Only an old woman behind you and you're blessed to be witnessing the very second OneForce’s SilentButDeadly strikes her awareness. A widening of the eyes and a shocked covering of the mouth. Everything in an ever widening circumference smells like dirty diapers and rotting vegetables. Damn you, OneForce, you’ll pay for this. You’ll rue. You shake your head disparagingly at the old maid beside you. As far as you’re concerned, she’s the offender, and the whole scene disgusts you. It’s all you can do.

Ok -- so, the ABC Debate last night sucked.  Hillary, Charlie and George (Channeling Sean Hannity) were mean to Barack Obama.  Enough -- I get it!  And, to paraphrase Barack Obama, he expects these kinds of attacks and is prepared to take them on -- It is nothing new and 'fair' within the frame of the 'politics is a contact sport'

How many more Diaries on ABC Sucks? Who knows, but I sincerely hope that they stop soon so that we can look at some of the substance of the Debate.  Slight as the substance was, means that the tiny bits of information that did come out of the Debate should get at least some airing.

But, before I get there; I want for all of You Obama supporters to watch the following video during which Obama deals with the "Obama Bin Laden" gaffe.

Breakfast where the news is read
Television children fed
Unborn living, living, dead
Bullet strikes the helmet's head
  Jim Morrison, The Unknown Soldier

PROPAGANDA- ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause.

The propaganda war is on and there are two sides to this coin.

Point in fact for the purpose of this discussion: The Chinese media is controlled by the communist government. No question. Do they use their media to further their cause? Certainly.

Who is on the other side of the coin?
You may be surprised...

Remember Project for a New American Century (PNAC)?  You know, the out of work gang of neocons plotting a military takeover of certain oil rich countries in the Gulf Region? We all know the names - Elliott Abrams, Gary Bauer, William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Steve Forbes, Donald Kagan, I. Lewis Libby, Dan Quayle, Donald Rumsfeld, Vin Weber, Paul Wolfowitz.

Remember the letter PNAC sent to President Clinton in 1998 that called for...

"...removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy."

more...

For the first time in my life, I am terrified by the prospect of our next Presidential election.  I have never looked forward to an election with as much hope and longing as I do this one, but I am also filled with foreboding and fear.