BUSH COMPARES IRAQ TO VIETNAM - THIS FROM A DRAFT DEFERMENT GUY!

WE CAN'T JUST "CUT & RUN!"


[OKAY, OKAY .... I DID IT MYSELF --- WAY BACK IN THE LATE '60's - BUT THAT WAS DIFFERENT - I HAD A COCAINE HABIT & BESIDES --- I HAD TO WORK ON MY DAD'S , FRIEND'S ELECTION CAMPAIGN - MAYBE THAT'S WHERE I STARTED SNORTING & TIPPING A FEW WHISKIES - FREELOADING ON PARTIES - PICKING UP BROADS, ETC., ETC., ETC.]

George, you're nothing but "Toe-Jam" as Rhea Perlman used to say as wasp-tongued waitress Carla Tortelli on "Cheers". You're just diseased and you infect everything you touch or handle. God what a monster your mother brought into the world. Speaking of Monsters, how is that old battle ax managing to stay upright these days - with those humongous, 1920 granny platform shoes. And, of course, her famous Katrina quote - those folks in the Super Dome never had it so good!

Comparing Vietnam to Iraq just puts the crowning touch on your "French Algiers" dilemma. Iraq is no Vietnam. Vietnam is certainly no Iraq.

Vietnam saw a regular, professional Army - the North Vietnamese/Viet Cong attacking the South. They did use proxies but the war was - from start to finish - a North Vietnam Regular Army Production.

Iraq, on the other hand, is just a pell-mell, free-for-all, open-ended Civil War, pitting religious tribe and/or ethnic group against religious tribe and/or ethnic group. Besides, these "feuds" are hundreds, if not, thousands of years old. Short of the reappearance of the Prophet Mohammad, Iraq is like a jar filled with several poisonous spiders. You get the picture.

Bush made his remarks in front of the safest of safe audiences - the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Before long, not even these folks will continue to provide him with a venue to spew forth his blather - aka - Linda Blair in "The Exorcist" (1973). Instead, he'll have to hunt down the "back-to-the-land" white Supremacists tribes in remote Idaho to continue his speechifying antics.

Major General Paul Eaton/Retired made his views on Bush's comparison of Iraq to Vietnam well known this past week.







Eaton: “My father’s name is engraved on the Viet Nam War Memorial. Killed in action after - missing in action for 38 years. I thought it was a bad idea to start going down this uh - this slink to Viet Nam during this speech. It was - it did not serve the country well, it does not serve the American fighting man and woman in Iraq well, and it certainly doesn’t serve the veterans well."

Even Republican Senator John Warner/Virginia - Secretary of the Navy under Nixon - said - of Bush's remarks on the Iraq/Vietnam comparison:

“I read it very carefully,” said Mr Warner. “I feel that there are no parallels, really. It’s a different type of situation.”

However you slice it or dice it, Mr. Bush is fast becoming what Joseph Stalin became just prior to his death. A doddering, disembodied, disconnected old ghost of a shadow. Mr. Bush needs to "Come to Jesus" like the good Christian he professes to be, fall down on his knees and ask the Good Lord for Forgiveness and Absolution.

Then have the decency to leave the White House [like Nixon] & fly back to Crawford, Texas and finally fix that damn white, paint-peeling shed we always see in the background! T for Texas - is now - T for "Toe-Jam".

KARL ROVE - aka MR. SLINKY - HEADS FOR THE EXITS

Bush apparatchik Karl [let me hurt you] Rove announced his intention to leave the White House at month's end. Obviously he and Tom Delay want to jump start Tom's Termite & Bug Business and aim it towards any and all Democrats. Or perhaps he'd like to devote the next few years - in private practice - to track down those 5 million e-mails that suddenly went missing from the RNC servers in the White House.

Whatever the real reason for Rove's departure the fact remains that he managed to single-handily destroy the Republican Party. What remains is not even a shadow of its former shell. What he did to the GOP was akin to what Hurricane Katrina did to New Orleans. That dream of GOP national hegemony was pounded to dust by the Rovemeister and his Monkey-Man in the White House.

Perhaps the fact that Senator Patrick Leahy's Senate Judiciary Committee has issued a subpoena compelling Rove's attendance before that Committee to answer the allegations of White House complicity in the firing of 9 U.S. Attorneys lies at the root of Rove's quick trip back to private life. It seems that Rove was personally involved in the dismissal of New Mexico's U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, a Republican. Telephone records of conversations reveal that Rove made suggestions that efforts be undertaken to have him replaced when prosecutions against alleged Democratic voter fraud in that state were not forthcoming.

Rove's foot prints are also evident in the dismissal of Bud Cummins, U.S. Attorney in Arkansas who in turn was replaced by Tim Griffin, right hand man to Karl Rove. Griffin did not last long as a U.S. Attorney and resigned hours after BBC Television ‘Newsnight’ reported that Congressman John Conyers requested the network’s evidence on Griffin’s involvement in ‘caging voters.’ Greg Palast, reporting for BBC Newsnight, obtained a series of confidential emails from the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign. In these emails, Griffin, then the GOP Deputy Communications Director, transmitted so-called ‘caging lists’ of voters to state party leaders.

Karl Rove presided over two stolen Presidential elections [2000 + 2004] and countless smear campaigns against countless candidates. His most infamous exploit will no doubt be his public revelation of the identity of - at the time - covert CIA operative Valerie Plame during a telephone conversation with Time Magazine reporter Matthew Cooper on July 11, 2003. While not mentioning Valerie Plame by "name, Rove did clearly indicate that she worked at the "agency" - an obvious reference Cooper interpreted to mean the "CIA." Rove also added that she was working on "WMD" - aka - Weapons of Mass Destruction. The conversation concluded with Rove stating "I've already said too much."

His short-term legacy will be his exploitation of the cultural divides within this country, pitting the conservative religious community against virtually everyone else. This was brought to full fruit in the 2004 Presidential election as Rove crowed that he was able to turn out millions of conservative evangelicals to re-elect George Bush to a second term. Using God, Gays, Guns & Abortion as the main ingredients in this diabolical concoction the hate monger in the West Wing did succeed at generating over 50+ million votes for Bush.

Unfortunately for Rove, the 2006 election showed just how short-lived this New GOP majority was. Like the Mississippi River - a mile wide but an inch deep. One thing is for sure, those 9-11 swing states that figured so prominently in the U.S. Attorney firings will be in play for the GOP in the 2008 Presidential campaign. Rove can direct this battle from the sidelines, hence his early departure in his quest for a 3rd Presidential Trophy. Only a massive Democratic turnout will quash any Republican machinations at election gimmicks and reinstall a Democratic president.

TO FISA OR NOT TO FISA - THAT IS THE DILEMMA

Friday, August 3, 2007 should have been a successful day for the Democrats in Congress. They had just reached a tentative agreement with the National Intelligence Director McConnell on modifying the 1978 FISA statute to allow for the electronic eavesdropping on foreign intelligence targets. The problem was that communications between two individuals on foreign soil but routed through the United States carried with it the requirement to seek warrants from the secret FISA court.

The intelligence community and the White House had argued that this portion of the FISA law should be changed to allow for unimpeded wiretapping free from the constraints imposed by FISA. At the 11th hour Congress and the National Intelligence Director had purportedly come to a satisfactory agreement to fix this problem. However at the "stroke of midnight" the White House completely scuttled this.

The White House was not satisfied with allowing for open-ended eavesdropping on two foreign nationals both on foreign soil using the United States to route the call. Instead, the White House pressed their demand even further calling for the FISA modification to include calls where one of the parties was inside the U.S. In effect, the last-minute requirement struck at the very heart of the 1978 FISA law.

As usual, Congress "cave-in" to the President's late-hour demand and faced with the August recess - voted on Saturday, August 4, 2007 in favor of the White House's version for the legislation modifying ["gutting"] FISA. This was only possible because 16 Democratic Senators joined with the Republicans to give the President his victory in the U.S. Senate, Senators Diane Feinstein/CA and Jim Webb/VA being among those turn-coat Democratic Senators. The House saw approximately 40 Democratic Congressman vote with the Republicans to approve the White House version of the expanded wiretap legislation.

Fear predominated the motivation behind all of the Democratic legislators shamelessly siding with Republicans in this ominous vote. Clearly eager to begin their August recess and just as clearly shunning any chance to be blamed for an attack on the country while away on break, they took the easy way out and surrendered their constitutional duties as the peoples' representatives and handed the Republicans a blank check with our Fourth Amendment.

God Damn the Democrats. Give 'em enough time and they'll dismantle the entire Bill of Rights before January, 2009. I have only one more piece of advice to include here - please call your Washington representatives this week and - while they are all on recess - many of the office staff are still on hand to answer your phone calls. The number of to cal is (202) 224-3121.

The bottom line is - every e-mail and phone call between someone inside this country to a friend, acquaintance, business associate or recipient party OUTSIDE this country is subject to being electronically monitored by the NSA. Every e-mail/phone call without exception. If that doesn't give one pause, I don't know what does. Any kind of privileged or attorney-client, doctor-patient communications are fair game. Boy have we come a long way in 7 years!