Goodbye...

...you ignorant, bloodthirsty piece of shit.

“Hello?...Tony? Pootie?....anybody there?”


Tags: goodbye, george w bush, goodbye george w bush, rat bastard, goodbye george w bush you rat bastard, smug, goodbye george w bush you smug rat bastard, half-witted, goodbye george w bush you smug half-witted rat bastard

“If There’s Success”

Preznit Shitferbrains, momentarily forgetting to say we’re kickin’ ass:

We all want to take troops out of Iraq and we are. He [Gordon Brown], by the way, left a lot of troops in, more so than they thought they were going to leave in initially, and so we communicate now and, if there's success, we're going to pull troops out and I have absolutely no problem how GB is managing the Iraqi effort.

Tags: george w bush, moron, douchebag, sociopath, iraq

Old Blackwater, Keep on Rollin’

We’ve all heard the infamous Blackwater story by now:

A convoy carrying diplomats was approaching the square when a second Blackwater convoy, positioned on the square in advance to control traffic, opened fire.

But what I haven’t heard is who these “diplomats” (referred to as “State Department officials” in this account) are or if they’ve been called to give their version of the incident. Am I the only one who’s curious?

Today, the AP reports that “Iraqi authorities want the U.S. government to sever all contracts in Iraq with Blackwater USA within six months. They also want the firm to pay $8 million in compensation to families of each of the 17 people killed when its guards sprayed a traffic circle with heavy machine gun fire last month.” Further, they’d like “U.S. authorities to hand over the Blackwater security agents involved in the Sept. 16 shootings to face possible trial in Iraqi courts.”

Do you think Blackwater, with its “essential of core corporate values—chief among [them] integrity, innovation, excellence, respect, accountability, and teamwork,” will go for that?

And speaking of accountability, Blackwater founder Eric Prince is on the board of Christian Freedom International, which, according to the Better Business Bureau, does not meet required standards for "Charity Accountability.” Go figure…

Tags: blackwater, iraq

Babs Bush: Nix to Flick Chick’s Sick Shtick!

“And, let’s face it, if the mothers ruled the world, there would be no goddamned wars in the first place.”
“Oh, you silly little naïf! Most soldiers are underprivileged anyway, so this war is working out very well for them…”
“Yeah! Suck it, Sally! This war is my god now!”

Tags: sally field, barbara bush, kathy griffin, 2007 emmy awards

Profit of God

I always wonder what Christians think when they read things like this:

Historian and defense industry expert Charles Patricoff believes that based on history our role in Iraq should be a permanent one. "Look at how we helped rebuild Germany and Japan after World War II. Because of the good we did there and are doing in Iraq, I don't believe we should ever leave Iraq. If we stay and rebuild Iraq, we will demonstrate to the world that we remain the best force for good in the world. More importantly, we as Christians can better influence that region for the Kingdom of God."

[. . .]

. . .Patricoff has worked in the defense industry for over 27 years. He currently works as a Sr. Contract Manager for Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp, a major supplier for the military, NASA, and Homeland Security.

Now, I realize that critical thinking is antithetical to religious belief, so I don’t expect them to detect the false analogy or to question the unsubstantiated claims presented as fact in this first paragraph, but surely the information presented in the final paragraph makes clear to all the decidedly worldly motives behind Patricoff’s desire for perpetual “influence” in the region.


Tags: religion, iraq, charles patricoff

Another Victory for the God Squad

Gays and lesbians are being forced back into the closet where they belong, or else:

Samir Shaba sits in a restaurant, nervously describing gay life in Iraq. He speaks in a low voice, occasionally glancing over his shoulder.

The heavyset, clean-shaven Christian says that before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, he frequented the city's gay blogs, online chat rooms and dance clubs, where he wore flashy tight clothes, his hair long and loose to his shoulders.

After the invasion, he and other gays and lesbians were driven underground by sectarian violence and religious extremists. Shaba, 25, packed his flashy clothes away, started wearing baseball caps and baggy T-shirts and stopped visiting clubs and chat rooms. But he couldn't bear to cut his hair.

[. . .]

In October 2005, Iraq's leading Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, issued a fatwa, or religious decree, on his website forbidding homosexuality and declaring that gays and lesbians should be "punished, in fact, killed."

"The people involved should be killed in the worst, most severe way," the decree said.

Giuliani is right: Thank God George Bush is our president. Our righteous leader and his glorious war have set the world on fire with religious fervor—OT-style!

Tags: religion, iraq, human rights

Look On Your Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair!

Editor and Publisher takes a look back at our millionaire pundit class coming in their pants over Commander Codpiece and his infamous “Mission Accomplished” stunt. Here’s a taste, courtesy of Maureen Dowd:

The tail hook caught the last cable, jerking the fighter jet from 150 m.p.h. to zero in two seconds. Out bounded the cocky, rule-breaking, daredevil flyboy, a man navigating the Highway to the Danger Zone, out along the edges where he was born to be, the further on the edge, the hotter the intensity.

He flashed that famous all-American grin as he swaggered around the deck of the aircraft carrier in his olive flight suit, ejection harness between his legs, helmet tucked under his arm, awestruck crew crowding around. Maverick was back, cooler and hotter than ever, throttling to the max with joystick politics.

Compared to Karl Rove's ''revvin' up your engine'' myth-making cinematic style, Jerry Bruckheimer's movies look like ''Lizzie McGuire.''

This time Maverick didn't just nail a few bogeys and do a 4G inverted dive with a MIG-28 at a range of two meters. This time the Top Gun wasted a couple of nasty regimes, and promised this was just the beginning.

Great googly-moogly!

Hey, Maureen: Your boy had another photo op the other day:



Why didn’t you write glowingly about that? It’s not too late, you know. Here, I’ll help get you started:

His large, rough hands, calloused from years of clearing brush, swinging golf clubs, driving pickups, and other thoroughly manly pursuits, skillfully caressed the taut, waiting skin of the drum.

He slowly licked his lips and began to sway those storied jogger’s hips to the hypnotic, pulsing rhythm. He waited for what seemed an exquisite eternity before decisively striking, bringing paroxysms of fevered delight to the spellbound crowd.

As the music swelled, he at last let himself go, beating harder, and harder, and—oh god—harder still.

What do you think: Was that a Dowd-worthy paean to Bongo Boy?

Tags: george bush, iraq, mission accomplished, editor and publisher, maureen dowd, media whores

3305

From October 2006 through last month, 532 American soldiers were killed, the most during any six-month period of the war. March also marked the first time that the U.S. military suffered four straight months of 80 or more fatalities. April, with at least 58 service members killed through Monday, is on pace to be one of the deadliest months of the conflict for American forces.

[. . .]

On Monday, the military announced the deaths of seven more American troops - three soldiers in Baghdad and two Marines in Anbar province on Monday and two soldiers in Fallujah on Saturday. The deaths brought the total number of American military fatalities in Iraq to 3,305, according to icasualties.org.

link

Tags: iraq, iraq casualties, bush twins

Tomato, Tomahto...

Potato, potahto... Let's call the whole thing off.

Tags: iraq, vietnam, cnn, oops!

An olio Exclusive!

Last night I watched George W. on 60 Minutes and was surprised to hear him take sole credit for the new war plan:

“[M]y attitude is if we were to start withdrawing now, we’d have a crisis in our hands in Iraq,” Bush explains. “And not only in Iraq but failure in Iraq will embolden the enemy. And the enemy is al Qaeda and extremists. Failure in Iraq would empower Iran, which poses a significant threat to world peace. So then I began to think, ‘Well, if failure’s not an option and we've gotta succeed, how best to do so?’ And that's why I came up with the plan I did.”

Curious, I searched the Googletubes and found what I believe to be the above-referenced plan:

Jet pilot, cowboy, and now military tactician: The man's a fucking genius.

Tags: george w. bush, dumbass, iraq, 60 minutes

9/11, Terror, al-Qaeda, Brutal Dictator, Justice, Freedom, the Almighty, 9/11

Besides all of the above, I wonder what W is going to say tomorrow? My guess is that he’ll go all balls-to-the-wall “Decider” on us, insisting that an escalation is the only way to win in Iraq. He’ll say this even though he knows that he has neither a real military plan nor sufficient troop levels to implement one—because he also knows that Congress will fight an escalation. It’s a good strategy, really: It will allow him to go to his grave maintaining that he could have won the war, if only those dirty hippie defeatocrats hadn’t stood in his way.

Tags: george w. bush, iraq, troop surge

Tony Snow: Putting the ASS in Compassion

From yesterday’s press briefing:

Q Tony, American deaths in Iraq have reached 2,500. Is there any response or reaction from the President on that?

MR. SNOW: It's a number, and every time there's one of these 500 benchmarks people want something.

Yeah…they want their dead kids back, you insensitive piece of shit.

Have a nice weekend, everyone. I’ll be back in a week or so, blogging live from LA! In the meantime, fleshpresser’s got us covered.

If a Car Bomb Explodes on the Other Side of the World…

… and no one is there to document it, did anything bad really happen?

According to Bush, the answer is no:

… there's still going to be tough days ahead, because the enemy has got the capacity to get on our TV with death and destruction. That's what they've got the capacity to do.”

What ? The ? Fuck ?

Read the entire transcript; it’s full of Bush-y goober goodness, such as his saying “we would like to end the Guantanamo” and “part of the issue I deal with is people want to know with certainty when certain things are going to happen.”

Well, I can tell you with certainty that I certainly hope to see you on Monday here at the olio. Have a great weekend, everyone.

Degradation: As American as Baseball Paintball and "A Few Bad Apples" Pie

A placard from Camp Nama in Iraq,
where some detainees were used as paintball targets.

June is Torture Awareness Month, and the Pentagon has chosen to mark the occasion by “omit[ting] from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that explicitly bans ‘humiliating and degrading treatment.’”

Let that sink in: The Pentagon has decided that US armed forces—acting on behalf of me, and you, and our parents, and our children, and all of our friends and neighbors—can humiliate and degrade prisoners. Humiliate and degrade.

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife.
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine!

A Terrible Admission

I didn’t want to post about Haditha or any of the other, similar stories that are currently making headlines. I didn’t want to think about them, even. But I can’t stop, and I’m overwhelmed with emotion: I feel for the young men and women who fight to survive in a hostile land, and I seethe with anger toward those who sent them there. And I think about the countless “official” reports I’ve read of death in Iraq, each so similar to this one:

The bombing in Haditha on Saturday was aimed at a convoy of American marines and Iraqi soldiers, a Marine spokesman, Capt. Jeffrey S. Pool, said. After the explosion, gunmen opened fire on the convoy. At least eight insurgents were killed in the firefight, the captain said.

or this one, filed just a day later:

On Sunday, the Marine Corps said 15 Iraqi civilians and a marine were killed the previous day when a roadside bomb exploded in Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad. At least 11 other Iraqis were killed or discovered dead on Sunday in various incidents, and military officials reported the deaths of two more Americans and a British soldier.

And whenever I read such reports in the future, I fear that a little part of me will wonder: Is that what really happened?

There can be no compromise with war; it cannot be reformed or controlled; cannot be disciplined into decency or codified into common sense; for war is the slaughter of human beings, temporarily regarded as enemies, on as large a scale as possible. [Jeanette Rankin, 1929]

Ah, The Simple Past!

According to Bush, “Coalition forces drove the Taliban from power, liberated Afghanistan, and brought freedom to 25 million people.” *

Use of the past tense makes all the difference in the world, doesn’t it? Of course, mainstream media outlets such as Radio Free Afghanistan and the Guardian love to thumb their noses at our president by refusing to use it in their liberal, anti-American, fact-based reports:

Lotfullah Mashal, a former spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, says Taliban fighters no longer rely solely on hit-and-run tactics by small groups of guerrillas. Instead, the Taliban have been concentrating into groups of more than 100 fighters to carry out frontal assaults on government security posts. Mashal says that development explains why deaths in Afghanistan during the past week have topped the number of reported deaths in Iraq in the same period.

After four years and $12bn, £6.5bn, in foreign aid, the majority of Afghans still scrape through life without electricity or clean water. More than seven million people are chronically hungry, according to the UN, and 53% live on less than a dollar, or 54p, a day. The sight of foreigners earning large salaries and driving large vehicles protected by private security companies has focused frustrations.

No, no, no ! Repeat after me: Coalition forces drove the Taliban from power, liberated Afghanistan, and brought freedom to 25 million people!


*Read the entire transcript: Apparently, Bush is just like Harry Truman—minus all of that crazy “Fair Deal” bullshit, of course. Oh—and Truman actually fought in a war.

Support Our Troops

It’s actually a pretty simple thing to do. Mr. olio and I got into the care-package habit when olioboy was deployed, and now that he’s home it’s impossible to forget about the other kids still in harm's way—many on their second and third tours.

There are several non-profits to choose from—a fairly comprehensive list can be found here, or you can visit Any Soldier from the link in my sidebar.

Whichever organization you choose, please take the time to send our troops some coffee, a pair of socks, or even just a letter of encouragement. It’s easy to send stuff—the USPS offers a flat-rate box that only costs $8.10 to mail, no matter what it weighs.

Have a great rest of the weekend, everyone. See you tomorrow.

Bush to Iraqis: Eventually Convince Suiciders to Stop Suiciding!

I shit you not. From yesterday’s joint press appearance:

Q The U.S. has the most powerful military in the world, and they have been unable to bring down the violence in any substantial way in several of the provinces. So how can you expect the Iraqis to do that?

Good question…now behold the dazzling response:

PRESIDENT BUSH: If one were to measure progress on the number of suiciders, if that's your definition of success, I think it gives -- I think it will -- I think it obscures the steady, incremental march toward democracy we're seeing. In other words, it's very difficult -- you can have the most powerful army of the world -- ask the Israelis what it's like to try to stop suiciders -- it is a difficult task to stop suicide bombers. That's the -- but that's one of the main -- that's the main weapon of the enemy, the capacity to destroy innocent life with a suicider.

And so I view progress as, is there a political process going forward that's convincing disaffected Sunnis, for example, to participate? [Sure, if “the Sunni people will reject this new government and will turn their hatred toward those Sunnis in the government” counts as “participation.”] Is there a unity government that says it's best for all of us to work together to achieve a common objective which is democracy? [Not quite: In fact, the “divisions among Iraqis are more pronounced than ever.”] Are we able to meet the needs of the 12 million people that defied the car bombers? [Nope: Baghdad only gets 4 hours of power and 1 hour of running water per day.] To me, that's success. [!?!] Trying to stop suiciders -- which we're doing a pretty good job of on occasion [That's encouraging, eh?] -- is difficult to do. And what the Iraqis are going to have to eventually do is convince those who are conducting suiciders [huh?] who are not inspired by al Qaeda, for example, to realize there's a peaceful tomorrow. And those who are being inspired by al Qaeda, we're just going to have to stay on the hunt and bring al Qaeda to justice. And our Army can do that, and is doing that right now.

Simply. Fucking. Brilliant.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the War President!

Another nugget of wisdom from our Commander in Chief:

In Iraq, the enemy has made it clear -- this is their words, not mine; I quoted the man -- the al Qaeda guy in Iraq -- those weren't my -- I didn't make up those quotes. That's that [sic] he said.

And speaking of quotations, Bush has been making frequent and enthusiastic references to “the political thinker guy in France” (aka de Tocqueville) lately, which I found odd until I read this. Check it out; you might find it very illuminating…

“A Matter of National Importance”

I watched Bush’s speech last night, but all I kept thinking about was another time he was on TV: March 19, 2003. That’s when he started a war that has, to date, caused the deaths of “at least 2,448” US troops. And I thought about why he told us the war was so necessary: It was to save us from “an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder.” And, of course, that got me to thinking about the findings of the Iraq Survey Group:

Nuclear: Saddam Husayn ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the Gulf war. ISG found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program (p. 11).

Chemical: While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter, a policy ISG attributes to Baghdad’s desire to see sanctions lifted, or rendered ineffectual, or its fear of force against it should WMD be discovered (p. 13).

Biological: In practical terms, with the destruction of the Al Hakam facility, Iraq abandoned its ambition to obtain advanced BW weapons quickly. ISG found no direct evidence that Iraq, after 1996, had plans for a new BW program or was conducting BW-specific work for military purposes (p. 18).

And then I thought: Immigration reform?!?! Fuck that. George Bush can claim that the subject is “a matter of national importance” all he wants, but I think his lying—or, if it makes anyone feel better, his being horribly, tragically, undeniably wrong—is a matter far, far more worthy of our national concern.