Murray Waas has a new installment of “As the Leak Drips” at National Journal. In this episode, we see Deadeye Dick leaking a still classified CIA report to Scooter so that Scooter can smear glam spy Valerie Plame.
At Unclaimed Territory, Glenn Greenwald wonders at the amazing ability of righties to delude themselves. Writing of rightie reaction to the protesting retired generals —
In response, Bush followers have publicly speculated about every defamatory motive which could be fueling these Generals — they have embraced every possible explanation except for the possibility that these Generals might actually hold these views sincerely. …
… The first objective — which worked very well for a good couple of years — was to prevent all dissenting views by labeling those who questioned the war or who opposed it as subversives, traitors, Friends of the Terrorists, America-haters, and crazed radicals. That took care of dissenting views for awhile, ensuring an echo chamber where the President’s views on the war were basically unchallenged. But the profound error of their judgments and the rank falseness of their claims could not be obscured forever, because the reality of the war slowly exposed the truth. But amazingly, facts do not deter them either.
Every fact that contradicts their initial premises is discarded as fiction or the by-product of malice. Every opinion that undermines their position can be explained only by venal and corrupt motives. Every event that transpires which deviates from what they predicted ends up being the fault of others. And any individual who questions their grand plan for epic and glorious triumph in a never-ending, all-consuming War of Civilizations is someone who is either weak-willed, weak-minded, or just plain subversive — whether that be life-long public servants like Richard Clarke and Joe Wilson (both of whom were smeared by Powerline in a separate post yesterday, which quoted RealClearPolitics calling them “Political hacks” and “fools” who “espouse positions publicly that they know to be untrue”); life-long conservatives like William Buckley or George Will, and even American military generals, including those who actually led ground troops in Iraq as recently as 2004.
From Kevin K, posting at firedoglake about righties:
They’re scared is all. They’re scared of a lot of things because they need to be scared of a lot of things. They lack purpose without things relentlessly scaring the shit out of them. And in order to distract the media from the fact that they’re more juiced up on fear than love for their country, they constantly try to frame liberals—who in their minds still wear patchouli, listen to Jefferson Airplane and love the fuck out of Jane Fonda—of being the cowards because, um, we’re “anti-war” (what fucked up times we live in where being “anti-war” is a “bad thing”) and we aren’t 100% freaked out that gay people, Mexicans, Arabs and the Dixie Chicks are roaming free in our streets. …
… I didn’t really follow the explosion of bedwetting blogs post-9/11 because I was too busy languishing in my pre-9/11 NYC liberal mindset, but apparently the blogosphere was flush with dorks in crouched-down, defensive positions who pecked away at something they called “warblogs.” These, ahem, “warbloggers” (must … stop … tittering) thought they were at war and no amount of fear of Blogger’s registration process and/or HTML interface was going to get in their way to fight the good fight. They were G.I. Jonesin’ for some seriously manly cutting ‘n’ pasting as they bravely stormed the frontlines of HyperText Transfer Protocol. And some of them, primarily “9/11 Republicans” and alleged libertarians, were so addicted to the notion that “everything changed after 9/11” that they discarded large, important chunks of their belief systems because they figured the “everything changed” doctrine applied to their very beings as well. A few of them have circled back to reality and well-earned rounds of raspberries, but a substantial number still cling to what are becoming increasingly razor-thin threads of dignity, and generally when you take it that far, you never come back because, let’s face it, it’s really, really embarrassing to do so. The Roger L. Simons and Charles Johnsons of today are the ex-lefty David Horowitzes and Michael Savages of tomorrow, except, as Pantload Media has proved, we don’t ever have to worry about Rog and Chucky being anywhere near as popular, successful or influential. Or handsome.
Larry Johnson posts on the “Throw Rummy from the Train Movement.” Stick a fork in Rummy, says Johnson. He’s done.
Well, the Bush Toadies will argue that ChimpMaster Cheney declassified the document in permitting it to be leaked. Then they’ll point to some Executive Order Cheney had The Chimp sign giving Cheney power to declassify.
Hopefully, the American people will understand that this was nothing more than tossing standard declassification rules aside in order to engagae in a scurrilous political attack on Joe Wilson.
It is hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that tens of thousands of innocent people have died in Iraq because of intentional lying by the Bush team—to acknowledge that it was my own government leaders who manipulated fearful America into an illegal war. This morning’s news: 2372 is the new total of American soldiers who have died there, while nearly 600 Iraqis have died in less than a week.
The deaths themselves represent only one part of an unending cascade of destruction wrought in people’s lives by this administration’s lies.
If I could open all the valves in American hearts, the valves that could and should flow with recognition of reality, deep sorrowful regret and resolve to change course and atone……I would do so.
But, ah….it takes real courage to abandon one’s cocoon of defensive ideology and crazy-making psychological blinders. That courage is missing in the neo-cons and the die-hard Bush supporters. Lacking courage, they have reached the painful defensive stage of pretzel contortion logic.