We need some new rules

For starters, we need to rename our policy institutes to more accurately reflect the product that comes out of those fever-swamps. They push agendas, reality be damned and critical thinking be suspended.

When agenda-whoring is the major gist, call them what they are – Belief Tanks. And call their "analysts" what they are, too – Agenda Whores.

With September looming, and the true believers having difficulty moving the goalposts to November, the Idiots from Brookings™ are back. Michael O’Hanlon and Ken Pollack take to the op-ed pages of the New York Times today to proclaim that “we are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms.”

O’Hanlon and Pollack bill themselves “as two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq.” They are very quick to point out that they are ‘two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq’ but they fail to mention that they were frothing hawks who poo-pooed those of us who were fucking right before hand. Pollack wrote an entire damned book layuing out “the case for invading Iraq,” and took the case for war to the Cheetos-and-Hot Pockets crowd on Oprah in 2002, where he enthusiastically beat the war drum and pushed the false intelligence about Iraq as justification to war.

O’Hanlon is nearly as odious as Pollack. He has shared Pollack’s zeal for war with Iraq. Prior to the invasion, he predicted a “a rapid and decisive” victory. Now, he is intent on flipping war critics to the “surge supporters” column, and his plans revolve around a long-term occupation.

Now that these pathetic fools who have been wrong around everything are back from another “fact finding” trip to Iraq, they are off on a PR junket touting “stay the course.” This weekend on CNN, the hapless O’Hanlon claimed that the war “is going brilliantly at this point.”

CNN correspondent Arwa Damon refuted his claim in an interview with Tom Foreman: .

FOREMAN: Arwa, is there a sense in Baghdad on the ground that that’s exactly what’s happening?

ARWA DAMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Tom, actually not when you speak to the Iraqi people. In fact, most of those that I’ve spoken to will not really say that they feel that the situation is getting better. Remember, they’re not measuring their own security in terms of numbers of U.S. casualties or numbers of bodies that were found unidentified throughout the entire capital. They are measuring their sense of whether or not things are getting better by the level of comfort with which they can leave their homes. For most Iraqis, they are still just as petrified of falling victim of sectarian violence or any other sort of attack that could take place in the capital today as they were before the surge began.

O’Hanlon breathlessly points to some non-existent metrics to bolster his puffery and support for this failed war:

He is excited about the delivery of “basic services — electricity, fuel, clean water and sanitation — to the people,” and he sings Hosannas to the ‘reliability‘ of Iraqi security forces, and he is simply wide-eyed over “how well the coalition’s new Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Teams are working.”

Too bad none of these things that have him so tickled are actually, you know, happening the way he says. In reality, residents of Baghdad now get only one or two hours of electricity each day, the Iraqi security forces are deserting in large numbers, and reconstruction has stalled.

Only a died-in-the-wool idiot would look to these never-right morons for advice.

So I guess they find a ready audience in aWol.

[H/T Think Progress & Glenn Greenwald]

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Wanker of the Night: Faux Filibuster Edition

[h/t Atrios]

I have been listening all night long, and I am getting ready to turn in.

But before I do, I have to anoint John Thune the biggest wanker in the Senate.
The Junior Senator from South Dakota has secured the title. That is quite an achievement when one has both of those double-digit I.Q. chuckleheads representing Oklahoma, Lieberman and Mad Jack Insane to battle for that dubious honor.

Thune is obliviously willfully ignorant if he is unaware of the Military Times poll from last winter that shows only one in three members of the armed services approve of the president and his conduct of the war.

That would almost seal the deal for him all by itself. But there is more...

He actually said to Jim Webb, a combat veteran himself, and the father of a Marine who served in Iraq...that he knows better what the boots on the ground think, because he has been to Iraq on three different taxpayer-funded junkets (and disrupted operations like visits by potentates always do) and Webb hasn't!

Really!

He said that!

Let me just clear something right the hell up...Visits by potentates are a pain in the ass stateside during peacetime. In a war zone they are an obscenity.

Webb has a very good source. The best source available...He has a son who fought there, recently. He is also a highly decorated combat veteran.

Jim Webb has the decency to not subject the troops in harms way to the added strain of a dog-and-pony show that is always precipitated when a potentate comes a-calling.

Stateside, during peacetime, it's a gigantic pain in the ass when those pricks come to visit. In a war zone, those little juggernauts are an affront to decency.

Remember that a mile away from Lindsey “I bought five rugs for five dollars” Graham when he got such a killer deal on those rugs last April, six G.I.'s who did not have those Apache gunships and Blackhawks hovering overhead giving them cover, were killed.

Remind everyone of that.

And remind 'em that when a Republican says he is behind the troops - the bastard likely has one hand on his fly and lascivious intent.

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For Dick Lugar, Party Trumps Principle

This is why I put a 24-hour-hold on reporting anything that comes close to looking encouraging if it comes from a party apparatchik Republican. They always backpedal and retract and spin and explain what they really meant to say – probably after a visit from Karl’s boyz, but that’s just speculation…

Yesterday evening, Think Progress posted the following:

In a major speech on the Senate floor, Lugar said that “victory” in Iraq as defined by President Bush is now “almost impossible.” The current course of the war “has lost contact with our vital national security interests in the Middle East and beyond,” he said.

Lugar warned that “persisting indefinitely” with Bush’s escalation strategy “will delay policy adjustments that have a better chance of protecting our vital interests over the long term.” He specifically rejected claims that withdrawing U.S. forces will increase instability. Downsizing the U.S. military presence in Iraq would “strengthen our position in the Middle East, and reduce the prospect of terrorism, regional war, and other calamities,” Lugar said.

And today, MSNBC tells us that I was smart to hold off on praising him, because he intends to take the sniveling cowards way out, and has no intention of backing up his bold rhetoric.

Lugar won't switch vote
However, [Lugar spokesman Andy] Fisher said the speech does not mean Lugar would switch his vote on the war or embrace Democratic measures setting a deadline for troop withdrawals.

In January, Lugar voted against a resolution opposing the troop buildup, contending that the nonbinding measure would have no practical effect. In spring, he voted against a Democratic bill that would have triggered troop withdrawals by Oct. 1 with the goal of completing the pull out in six months.

Next month, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., plans to force votes on several anti-war proposals as amendments to a 2008 defense policy bill. Members will decide whether to cut off money for combat, demand troop withdrawals start in four months, restrict the length of combat tours and rescind Congress' 2002 authorization of Iraqi invasion.

Expected to fall short of the 60 votes needed in the Senate to pass controversial legislation, the proposals are intended to increase pressure on Bush and play up to voters frustrated with the war.

…the proposals are intended to increase pressure on Bush and play up to voters frustrated with the war. Fisher says that like it’s a bad thing! In reality it is the only thing. Change ain’t gonna happen until this president is forced to deal with the reality that is “dealing with” ~30 Americans a week – and the only way he is going to be forced into facing facts is if members of his own party insist that he do so.

Dick Lugar should hang his head in shame. And he should also attend the funeral of every Indianan who falls and explain to the grieving family members why he puts party and politics above the lives of their loved ones.

[Crossposted from Blue Girl, Red State and OOIBC]

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