John Negroponte’s backing down as Director of National Intelligence left a vacuum Bush has decided to fill with Mike McConnell, who is apparently so much more qualified to occupy the post that one has to wonder why the hell Bush didn’t pick him first.
“He served as director of the National Security Agency in the 1990’s,” Mr. Bush said. “He was the intelligence officer for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the liberation of Kuwait in Operation Desert Storm.”
Although he has been a private consultant for the last decade, Mr. McConnell said he had stayed in touch with intelligence agencies and issues.
His work, he said, “has allowed me to stay focused on national security and intelligence communities as a strategist and as a consultant. Therefore, in many respects, I never left.”
Meanwhile Il Duce is changing out a lot of the old Iraqi guard. Some of it is due to retirement — but as the Beeb notes, the timing sure is convenient. I guess this is the Textard’s way of trying to smokescreen. Look, I’m not staying the course; I’m surging and stuff, and we’re changing out the generals, so it’s all different now.
No, George, it’s no different at all. You’re just going to try to get away with gimping along for another 18 months or so … and then you’ll be able to dump the entire steaming mess of shit in the next poor bastard’s lap.
At this rate, that’ll only be another 2,000 or so American kids killed because of your unwillingness to accept personal responsibility for your stupidity and pigheadedness.
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Saddam Hussein’s death is still being steadfstly ignored by everyone in the White House — a telling and continuing silence. The rest of the world, however, is commenting on it.
News organs from Japan to Germany, from the UK to the US, are talking about Hussein’s final moments and the more-or-less restrained, even dignified way this man went, open-eyed and upright, to his own killing.
Months before, Hussein urged in a letter to Iraqis not to hate, not to carry grudges.
Now I’m not going to try to say Hussein was a good guy. He wasn’t. He was a killer, and it was probably fair that he was brought to trial for committing crimes against his people — even though his deposition was violent and the result of the US invasion of his sovereign nation, imposed by external force rather than brought about by internal revolution.
I vacillate pretty regularly on capital punishment; on the one hand I realize it doesn’t really accomplish anything, but on the other I believe there are some people who are so vile and detestable that they’ve given up the right to any claim of being human.
I’m not sure if Hussein fell into that category or not, so I’m not sure how I feel about the death sentence handed down to him, nor that it was carried out. In light of the re-sentencing of the Tripoli Six to death, and given the undeniable fact that Bush has committed crimes against Islam for which he could also be sentenced to death, I wonder. Is capital punishment always valid? Certainly not. Is it something that might even be subject to relativity? I think surely. Is it, therefore, something we should apply with extreme caution?
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WASHINGTON - President Bush said Wednesday he’ll submit a five-year budget proposal that will balance the federal budget by 2012 and called on Congress to sharply cut back on costly pet projects hidden in spending bills.
Who are you, and what have you done with the real Textard?
He’s got himself worked up all over again, this time about a forthcoming terrorist attack — according to his imaginary friend, anyway.
“I’m not necessarily saying it’s going to be nuclear,” he said during his news-and-talk television show “The 700 Club” on the Christian Broadcasting Network. “The Lord didn’t say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that.”
Methinks someone’s off his meds again. Pat: “The Lord” didn’t say a single thing to you. This “Lord” of yours simply does not exist.
Robertson said God told him during a recent prayer retreat that major cities and possibly millions of people will be affected by the attack, which should take place sometime after September.
The obvious arousal that is experienced by apocalyptics should cue the rest of us to how things really are for them. In modern society, there isn’t another group that betrays such prominent sexual lust at the thought of millions of people being killed.
The clearly erotic glee with which they pursue their fantasies of destruction is a symptom of the sickness from which they suffer — that, coupled with the fact that 25% of them believe Jesus will descend to Earth in 2007, betrays how wholly out of touch with reality these folks actually are.
And we believe they’re fit to make decisions that affect millions of human lives?
IRAQ — Disorder was the rule of the day as, over the weekend, more than 650,000 persons killed since the Iraq war began suddenly returned to life. They immediately began trying to rebuild their war-torn neighborhoods, ousting the various Islamo-terroist cells that have sprung up in the vacuum of leadership imposed on that nation by the US in 2003.
In the US, further disorder came in the form of 3,000 killed US soldiers suddenly appearing in the midst of their friends’ and families’ homes to help them all celebrate the new year. Added to that were the nearly 3,000 killed in the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.
Meanwhile Osama Bin Laden, the nominal leader of al-Qaeda, turned himself in to Pakistani authorities, at the same time issuing the decree that Islamic terrorism the world over was to come to an immediate end, saying, “Now that Saddam Hussein is dead, it is clear the US is the victorious nation and the one right with God.”
President Bush only had words of humble gratitude to speak. “These miracles are showing all of us how great the power of The Lord is. I am but His humble servant, like unto the slow-of-speech Moses. To God alone is the greatness attributed.
“Be at peace, world, for the tyrant is finished.”
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