“Mugsy’s Rap Sheet”

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- Mugsy

Way back in February of last year, I wrote about a “slideshow” released by the Bush Administration that purported to show hard evidence of Iranian weapons that had been snuck into Iraq to aid the insurgency. A brief review of those weapons/munitions quickly raised questions as to just where those weapons were actually coming from. The likelihood that those weapons were of “Iranian make” was nowhere close to being as certain as the Bushites would of had us believe. Almost as quickly as the claims arose, they were dropped from the GOP’s talking points.

Then last week, a few “small” interrelated stories hit the news:

1. Last Friday (5/9), the LA Times noted that “There was something interesting missing from Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner’s introductory remarks to journalists at his regular news briefing in Baghdad on Wednesday: the word “Iran,” or any form of it.”

MG Bergner showed off a large cache of some “20,000″ weapons & munitions to reporters that were recovered in recent weeks by U.S. and Iraqi security forces. At no time did he point the finger at Iran as being the source of these weapons.

If you look even casually at the above photo, the weapons certainly appear not to have been recently constructed nor well preserved. If I were to guess, since no one is questioning the source of these weapons, they likely know where they are from: U.S.-made munitions dug out of old Iraqi weapons dumps.

2. Last week, Iraqi rebellion leader, Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr denounced revered Iraqi cleric Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani (living in the town of Najaf) for failing to condemn the recent outbreak of violence that has killed hundreds in Baghdad:

For 50 days Sadr City is being bombed … Children, women and old people are being killed by all kinds of US weapons, and Najaf remains silent.”

Consider for a moment what this suggests. Sistani’s followers certainly aren’t killing fellow Shi’ites living in “Sadr City”. And, why would you be upset that a fellow cleric wasn’t denouncing the violence if you thought they were behind it? They’re not bombing themselves, and if it were the Sunni-based al-Qaeda, Sadr would not of hesitated to blame them. No, the source of the violence are the actions of U.S. & Iraqi security forces attempting to wall-in Sadr City:

3. The Pentagon announced Tuesday that it was finally ready to put five alleged 9/11 co-conspirators on trial in a military court assembled at “Gitmo”, the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Among them, “9/11 Mastermind” Kalid Sheik Mohammad (”KSM” for short).

According to the report, “Prosecution of a sixth suspect, so-called 20th hijacker Mohammed Qahtani, was dropped.” You might remember “Zacarias Moussaoui” from a few years back. He was the man the Bush Administration repeatedly alleged was the missing “20th hijacker” over-and-over again from 2001 until his conviction in 2006 (view the court indictment here). I guess he was only the 19-1/2 hijacker. The Pentagon has not explained why they dropped the charges against Qahtani, but an ACLU lawyer has suggested that it was because any confession he might of made was the result of torture, and therefor not admissible in a court of law. He was released “without prejudice” so that he could be re-arrested and re-tried at a later date should they finally find the evidence they need to convict him of something he actually did.

Among the remaining five suspects going on trial, one (Hawsawi) is not even being charged with the actual hijackings.

So here we are: a huge seizure of weapons in Baghdad that come from who-knows-where, the military building a wall around an entire community in a thinly veiled attempt to suppress violence just long enough for Bush to leave office (and maybe get John McCain elected), and multiple 9/11 co-conspirators being accused of the same crime, NOT being charged, and then having to be released because they were tortured. What do all these failures have in common?

The King of Failure himself, George W. Bush.

Just a quicky. Consider this “The World’s Shortest Voter Guide.” I made it in about 15 minutes.

Pass it on.

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- Mugsy

Okay, before anything else, I just gotta say: It’s “Speed Racer”, not “Speedracer”. He doesn’t “race speed“, it’s the man’s name. Stop saying it wrong!

As you might have guessed, the cheesy Japanimation classic was my favorite cartoon as a kid, I lived and breathed Speed Racer from age 5 to 10. Even now as a grownup, I was excited when I first heard they were making a live-action movie version of my favorite cartoon. His car, The Mach-5, was the ultimate (James) “Bond” car and would of made an excellent action movie, but when I saw the previews with neon race tracks, loop-d-loops and an unfamiliar looking car with a tiny “6″ on the side, I was crushed, I felt like the kid that just learned Santa Claus didn’t exist. All my anticipation dashed like an egg on the sidewalk. Once again, another great childhood memory ruined by modern pop-culture.

Whew. Okay, glad to get that off my chest.

And speaking of “dashed fantasies”, the latest sign that things in Iraq aren’t going quite as swimmingly as they’d like us all to believe: The U.S. military, unable to bring the insurgency under control and unite the country, has chosen instead to simply erect a giant 3 mile long, 12′ high concrete wall around all of Sadr City, home to most of Baghdad’s Sunni minority.

And as you might expect, when someone tries to cut you off from the rest of the country and turn your entire city into a giant prison, the people inside are apt to get violent. Construction of the wall has been incredibly slow and deadly.

The Iraqi’s call the giant 12-foot concrete barriers “Bremer Walls” in honor of the former U.S. head of the now defunct CPA (Iraq “Coalition Provisional Authority”). Viceroy L. Paul Bremer was the first to order placement of giant concrete barriers all around Baghdad to hinder car bombs and suicide attacks from people wearing explosive vests.

So, the next time you hear President Bush, John “100 years in Iraq” McCain or his BFF’s Joe Lieberman, Lyndsey Graham, or ANYONE on the Fox Propaganda Network, declaring how “well” The Surge “has worked”/”is working”, remember this video. Out of ideas, the U.S. military has simply given up trying to unite the country and has instead decided that the best solution for the future of Iraq is to simply build a giant wall around an entire section of the city, trapping inside not only the “insurgents” they wish to restrain, but every man, woman and CHILD therein.

Another brilliant idea brought to you by the same people that warned us: “Imagine a terrorist network with Iraq as an arsenal and as a training ground…” - [President George W. Bush giving reason why we should invade Iraq 11/4/02]. To be fair, Bush didn’t say turning Iraq into a giant terrorist training ground would be a BAD thing. Silly us.

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- Mugsy

Yesterday I received my “stimulus check” from the Federal Government. Having a low Social Security number and Direct Deposit, I was among the first to receive my check from the government. My first purchase: a full tank of gas.

Since I work from home, I’ve been noticeably absent from my blog as of late, shirking my blogging duties as I concentrate on other projects. This has kept me home quite a bit over the past few weeks. And because I work from home, this saves me a lot of driving and a lot of money on gas. But “money” and I don’t see a lot of each other, forcing me to economize whenever and wherever possible. That means stretching out a tank of gas for as long as I possibly can with fewer unnecessary trips. The last time I filled up my gas tank, a mere 6 weeks ago, I was upset that the price of gas had shot up overnight an extra ten cents a gallon to $2.69. Had I of bought gas the day before, I would of saved a couple of bucks.

Because of my meager income, I try to put off buying gas for as long as I possibly can, hoping that at some point, prices may dip a few cents some week. But I always fill up. I can’t understand people who “only buy a few gallons” or “fill up when they hit just half a tank” hoping against hope that the price of gas will come down before the next fill up. This is just stupid in my eyes because 99 out of 100 times, the price of gas goes up, not down. And if you buy gas more often that you need to, you are ensuring that you always buy gas at the highest current price. While $2.69 seemed like highway robbery at the time, I was awfully glad I filled up at the time when the price of Regular Unleaded hit a national average of $3.51 a gallon 9 days ago:
 

…and another nine more cents just six days later:
 

Did you know the gas pump “dings” when you hit the $50 mark? I didn’t until yesterday.

As I’m filling up at the pump, the same thought wouldn’t leave my mind: “They might as well of just cut these checks straight to the oil companies because that’s exactly where they are all going.” The irony is that it is the high price of fuel that has caused the current economic crisis, and the bulk of the “stimulus” funds will be eaten up by increased costs due to high fuel prices.

I have a Conservative friend (by Texas law, I must have at least two) that I’ve known since high school. Back in 2004 (I believe), I was angry that gas prices had breached $2/gal. He responded with his usual Conservative “pro-corporate” indignance: “You Liberals all think: gas prices are high (ergo) the oil companies must be making a killing.” His thinking was obviously that the high price of oil was hurting the oil companies too, cutting into their profit margins. I responded that the last time I checked, it didn’t cost them any more to pump the oil out of the ground just because oil prices go up.” It wasn’t a week later before the news reported for the first time that Exxon had record profits that quarter, so high that they had surpassed G.E. as the richest corporation on the planet. I’ve never let him forget it, and now every time they announces record profits in the oil industry, I throw it back in his face (as any good friend would) as an example of how Conservatives can be so sure of themselves and get extremely indignant over things they “believe to be true” when the facts and evidence are often 180^o opposite.

More and more often, I find myself thinking about the Summer of 2000, Clinton’s final year in office. As Texas Governor George W. Bush and his VP-nominee were talking the economy into a recession at nearly every campaign stop (”The economy isn’t as good as they say.” he kept repeating over and over until it became a self-fulfilling prophecy), long-haul truckers across the country were threatening to go on strike when the price of diesel rose 20cents in just four months to the unbearable price of $1.49/gal. In June of 2000, the governor was telling everyone that if he were President, he’d tell OPEC to “open up the spigot” to increase the oil supply and bring gas prices down from the unbearable price of $1.46/gal, up $0.29 from $1.17/gal the year before.

My earliest memory of gas prices was in 1979 when President Jimmy Carter tried to switch an unwilling country over to the “Metric System” and gas stations were required to list the price of fuel in liters instead of gallons. I remember the commotion when gas prices fell from $0.79/gal to $0.21/ltr literally over night. Seeing that low number still sticks in my memory to this day. As Carter correctly pointed out, continuing to use the old “standard” system while the rest of the world went metric was costing the U.S. economy billions every year, mostly from having to produce things likes nuts & bolts in two different formats, one for us and one for the rest of the world. Different labeling, different pricing, and just adding to the cost of doing business overseas. Interestingly enough, the only remnant of Carter’s metric push: the 2-liter soda bottle. Before that, I remember buying Coke in giant 32oz glass Coke bottles. For some odd reason, no one ever complained about only being able to buy soda by the liter… but gasoline, never!

In 1996, just prior to Bill Clinton’s re-election, gas prices briefly fell to just $0.99/gal locally, down from the normal price of about $1.10. Think about that. From Carter to Clinton, 1979 to 1996, in 17 years, the price of gasoline had risen a mere $0.30 (with fluctuations in between, maybe as much as $0.50 at any one point.) When George Bush became President in 2001, the price of Regular Unleaded gasoline was $1.43/gal (up apx 30cents in four years). A mere three months later, with two Texas oilmen now in office, the “National Average” price of gasoline “soared” $0.19 cents to $1.62/gal. This was BEFORE 9/11, so you Bush apologists, don’t waste my time with your stale “9/11 changed everything” defense, and AFTER Governor George Bush said “as President” he’d tell OPEC to “open the spigot” in order to to bring down gas prices from the lofty high of $1.49/gal.

In the 7 years since George Bush became President, the price of gasoline has risen 252% from a “National Average” of $1.43/gal in April of 2001 to $3.60 today. And only NOW as the price of diesel broke the $4/gal threshold, have truckers threatened to go on strike in protest of high fuel prices.

I have no answers, only questions. Why is it when a Democrat is in office, a 30cent rise in fuel prices is worth striking over; a stock market that grew from just under 340% (3,500 points to 11,723 at the start of the 2000 Presidential campaign) was derided with “the economy isn’t as good as they say it is” and helps get a Republican elected President, but a 252% rise in fuel prices in seven years, a stock market that has risen barely 21% in seven years, despite not one but two recessions, and a home mortgage market in meltdown, a Republican candidate for President can describe the economy as “strong” and still be considered a serious candidate for President?

If you have the answer, you are wiser than I.

(Postscript: “Crooks & Liars” started a great thread yesterday reminding everyone how the price of gasoline magically fell $0.80 just in time for the 2006 election.)

(ThinkProgress: RNC Celebrates Windfall For Oil Companies.)

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- Mugsy

This was a busy week for the Giant Rubber Room we call Washington. The Supreme Court decided that the day of the first Papal visit in 27 years… which happened to fall on the Pope’s 81st birthday… was the perfect day to reinstate the Death Penalty that the church so opposes. Couldn’t wait another 24 hours to starting killing people again, guys? Oil hit a record $117 a barrel and three airlines declared bankruptcy because of it. The Media-Meat Grinder decided that in a time of war, with record high gasoline & oil prices pushing the economy towards recession, employment hitting record lows, home foreclosures rising at an alarming rate and financial companies asking for multi-billion dollar bailouts, the pin-heads at ABC News decided that the most pressing question on peoples minds was “why doesn’t Barack Obama wear a flag pin?” Sigh.

So shifting focus for a moment, a Conservative visitor to one of BI30’s YouTube videos (”Senate investigation finds no Iraq/al Qaeda link EITHER“) reported the findings of a Pentagon contracted November, 2007 report (summary) by the “Institute for Defense Analysis” citing documented ties between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. At first glance, the report looks quite damning:

• “600,000 recovered documents” and “several thousand hours of audio & video” following the 2003 invasion of Iraq reveal Saddam armed and trained terrorist groups to target enemies of Iraq.
• State sponsorship of terrorism became such a routine tool of state power that Iraq developed elaborate bureaucratic processes to monitor progress and accountability in the recruiting, training, and resourcing of terrorists. (I was already aware of this item.)
• Saddam kept “Weapon caches in overseas embassies”.
• Recovered documents show Saddam held a high-level meetings on August 5th and September 2nd of 2001 regarding “recruiting suicide bombers”, including members of al-Qaeda, that would “write volunteer statements, preferably in blood.”
• In 1999, Saddam’s Fedayeen trained suicide bombers to launch bombings and assassinations inside London as part of a plot code-named “Blessed July”.

Wow. Damning stuff. And if I didn’t read one more word or were provided any more detail, I might be inclined to believe that maybe, just maybe, the Bush Administration had some justification in invading Iraq. A Google search produced MANY links referencing the IDA Report in defense of the Bush Administrations’ decision to go to war, but none examining the report and coming to the opposite conclusion. “Maybe there’s something to it?“, I mussed.

Of course, most obvious is that if this report really had uncovered information all but exonerating the Bush Administrations’ justifications for invading Iraq, why haven’t we heard the Bush Administration crowing about it, pointing to it at every opportunity in defense of their decision to invade Iraq?

Questions in hand, I promised our YouTube friend that I would read the report before coming to any conclusions. The full report is said to be several hundred pages, but the Executive Summary linked to above is a more concise 94 (closer to about 60 once you cull the blank pages, index and endnotes). So I started reading and taking notes.

The very first claim I was most interested in was the “links between Saddam and al Qaeda“, a most dubious claim, principal among the Bush Administrations justifications for preemptively invading Iraq, because it has also been well documented that the two groups were bitter enemies and not allies. So I searched the PDF for the word “Qaeda”. The first result states:

This study found no “smoking gun” (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam’s Iraq and al Qaeda.

It does go on to suggest:

Some in the regime recognized the potential high internal and external costs of maintaining relationships with radical Islamic groups, yet they concluded that in some cases, the benefits of association outweighed the risks.

The impetus for this extremely limited collaboration: the imminent invasion of Iraq by mutual enemy, the United States. Ironically, George Bush’s invasion of Iraq may have provoked the very collaboration the Bush Administration said invading would prevent.

While reading the IDA report, it is important to keep in mind exactly *whom* the targets of Saddam’s terrorist activities were: primarily expatriated Kurd’s and Iran. The report also cites no examples whatsoever of Iraq procuring nor using chemical or biological weapons in any form. Iraq’s weapon of choice: bombs. Conventional incendiary devices.

All examples citing Saddam’s animosity towards the United State are “retaliatory”, following threats by the U.S.. The first recorded expression of this in the IDA report is just prior to the 1991 Gulf War (pg 45), where the U.S. threatened to respond should Iraq invade Kuwait. The majority of “pan-Arab” terrorist activities conducted by Iraq were against other Arabs and those whom threated the reign of Saddam as ruler of Iraq. There are no examples of Saddam threatening “unprovoked” attacks against the United States, clearly indicating that the object of all his terrorist activities were simply to remain in power.

It is reasonably clear from the report that Saddam was not interested in drawing the wrath of the United States down upon him. His sole concern was holding on to power, which meant going after groups that threated his Presidency. On those few occasions when… as a result of U.S. threats… aiding an opposition group against their common enemy was desirable, he was still *extremely* cautious, documenting in detail (pg ES-2) just what type of aid and how much was actually given, to avoid having that group then use that aid against him.

By the time I finished the Summary and reached Pg. 1, it was already clear that Saddam only used “terror organizations” against the Kurds & Iran… threats to his Presidency, and not a threat to the United States so long as we did not threaten his Presidency (note again the above observation that it was the threat of an invasion by the U.S. that initiated any contact between Saddam and al Qaeda at all, and even those were inconsequential). The suggestion by the Bush Administration that Saddam might initiate another “9/11 type attack” is unfounded because there would be nothing for Saddam to gain by drawing the wrath of the U.S.. This is evidenced by his willingness to allow weapons inspectors back into Iraq in late 2002 and the dismantling of al Samoud missiles in early 2003, all in an attempt to appease the United States so he could retain power.

On the question whether Saddam might “inadvertently” have provided a terrorist group like al Qaeda with weapons/training that could then be used against the U.S., one must keep in mind that Saddam never entrusted al Qaeda with any weapons or training that they could then turn around and use against him.

Now, thinking outside of the IDA report, connect what the report actually says… training/construction assistance in “car bombs“ and “explosive vests“ to be used against anyone that threatened the reign of Saddam Hussein, to the Bush Administrations’ pre-war claims of:

“25,000 liters of anthrax, materials sufficient to produce more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent […] upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents, several mobile biological weapons labs.”
[…]
“the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

It would seem clear that the threat from Saddam Hussein was greatly exaggerated. Possession of such items suggests a regime *seeking* a conflict with the United States, when the IDA report clearly demonstrates that is the last thing he wanted.

There was a phrase in the report that piqued my interest: “Weapon caches in overseas embassies”. Every mention in the report simply acknowledges their existence yet provide no detail. As it is unlikely Saddam stockpiled those “tons of chemical weapons” in foreign embassies (and the report certainly never makes that claim), it is likely the weapons being referred to were conventional firearms such as handguns and rifles “in excess of weapons required for embassy security” (pg 4). Without more detail, this is only speculation. I find it interesting that we appear to know the existence of these weapons, but no record of their seizure following the fall of Baghdad. I mean, how is it we know about these weapons but apparently no one has gone in, confiscated them, and provided a full accounting of what was there? For more than a year, Iraq had no sovereign government to deny anyone access to those embassies. And someone MUST of had access enough to confirm the weapons were there, so how come we don’t know how many and of what type? The report never says (at least the 94-page summary never says).

In 1999, Saddam tasked his Fedayeen to plot an offensive dubbed “Blessed July”, targeting Kurd’s living outside of Iraq, including London. Fedayeen training camps were reused to “train terrorists for assignment in London” (pg 1) targeting “Kurdish areas” […] “targets for this operation were most likely Iraqi exiles”, not Londoners in general. Note: “it remains unclear to this day if any parts of this specific plan were ever executed.” A quick date-restricted Google News search between 1999 & 2000 for any report of Kurds being bombed or attacked “in London” turned up nothing. Included in Saddam’s “Blessed July” plot: “hostile agent Ahmad Chalabi”… you remember Chalibi… the Iraqi exile that convinced a willing Bush Administration that he had “documented evidence” of Saddam’s vast WMD stockpiles and burgeoning nuclear programs… documents which he never produced.

Regarding documentation of “the production, testing, and delivery of a sophisticated car bomb using military-grade explosives” described on pages 4-5, keep in mind that the targets of these bombs were Kurds and other Arab enemies of Iraq, not Americans. Since al Qaeda was not concerned with targeting Kurds, it is unlikely, considering Saddam’s hyper-sensitivity towards al Qaeda, that he ever provided them with this sort of training. And again, remember that no such attack ever took place in the UK.

On pages 7-8, the IDA report reveals Saddam’s increasing support for “suicide attacks”, producing a letter showing “organizations within the regime were already considering the use of suicide terrorism in the fall of 2001.” Anyone that might draw a connection between this and 9/11 is talking nonsense. The planning for 9/11 had been in the works for at least 18-months (perhaps years) by that time, and flies in the face of the report’s own acknowledgment of Saddam’s reluctance to aid al Qaeda, with “no collaborative ties” ever being found. Also keep in mind that the uncovered document is a continuation of Saddam’s Kurdish offensive.

Moving on to later pages, the report cites Saddam’s training of Arab militants as early as 1981 (pg. 15), but for what purpose, the report never says. It does say that training was still taking place before the 1991 Gulf War (presumably to fend off a U.S. defense of Kuwait).

Between the years of 1991 and 1999, the report shows a number of extra-Iraq (outside Iraq) plans by Saddam’s Fedayeen Army:

• In 1992, Saddam sought a retaliatory strike against Egypt for its assisting the U.S. during the ‘91 Gulf War. (pg 16)
• In June of ‘92, Saddam ordered no less than 212 operations against the Kurds in Northern Iraq, which became the impetus for the UN decreed “No fly zones”.
• A 1993 document (pg 17) speaks of Iraq training Sudanese fighters inside Iraq to be followed by opening a training camp for Sudanese insurgents inside Sudan after the U.S. became involved in the Somali Civil War (Sudan is the Western region of Somalia). Weapons listed that were to be supplied to the Sudanese: conventional arms: rifles & pistols.
• Saddam tried to inject himself into the 1993 World Trade Center bombing controversy after the fact, expressing doubt that Abdul Rahman (”the blind sheik”) was even capable of organizing something so elaborate on his own without any outside help, but wanted to know if he had because “it would be a big bonus for the Arabs…” if he had (pg 43)
• In 1995, Saddam tasked an IIS (Iraqi Intelligence Service) agent “to kill two Swedish journalists by blowing up their car with two sticks of dynamite”. While the report does not state where or why, the suggestion appears to be that they were in Iraq at the time. Without going into too much detail, the plot failed due to colossal incompetence (pg 32).
• Saddam’s Fedayeen Army actively recruited thousands of foreign fighters between 1990 and 2003, mostly from Saudi Arabia, to fight in the Iraqi army. Other than that, there are no substantial reports of Iraqi military operations between 1995 and the planning of the “Blessed July” offensive against the Kurds in 1999, prompted as a retaliation against U.S. imposed sanctions against Iraq (Saddam believed he could bargain-down the sanctions if he threatened the Kurds we were protecting behind our No Fly Zone).

Summarizing a 90 page summary of a 400 page report takes some doing, but one point is clear, that at no time did Saddam ever posses the desire, means nor capability of threatening the United States, and viewed groups like al Qaeda to be too great of a threat to his own rule to entrust with any substantial support that could then be turned against him. His weapons were limited to conventional firearms and “dumb missiles” like SCUDs and al Samoud rockets with no navigation and minimal payloads, none of which were prohibited under the terms of his 1991 surrender (the UN ordered Iraq’s al Samoud missiles destroyed in 2003 upon discovery they had been modified to exceed their maximum travel distance to within reach of Israel.)

The IDA report does dispel (yes, that’s the correct spelling) the common misconception that Saddam was not engaged in “any” terrorist activity between 1992 and 2003, or that Iraq “never” contacted al Qaeda, though it is clear that none of these activities were related to instigating an unprovoked attack against the United States, nor any of the other justificatios given for invading Iraq on the grounds of it being an “imminent threat” to the security of the United States.

I’ll try to get to some lighter fare next week. Promise.

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- Mugsy

Websters dictionary defines “paranoid” as “characterized by suspiciousness, and an overwhelming sense of persecution.”

On last Friday’s NBC’s Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams interviewed John McCain, where he gave a speech at the 40th anniversary vigil of Martin Luther King Jr. outside the former Lorraine Motel where King was murdered. A speech was being delivered behind them on the loudspeaker that all but drowned out the interview (I’ll be including the segment in a future video):

Williams explained that they were promised a quiet remembrance would be taking place during the interview, but instead, they found themselves competing with a impassioned speech before a boisterous crowd. In the days before, NBC interviewed Clinton and Obama in nice quiet rooms where you could hear every word. Republican viewers were quick to notice, and NBC received so much angry email over the McCain interview that Williams was forced to respond on air the following Monday:

“UNFAIR!
You allowed Senators Clinton and Obama to give an intelligible speech on your program while having Senator McCain drowned out by noise so no one could hear him.
BIAS!”

“This is another example of the liberal media in our face. I shall find my news elsewhere — not on NBC.”

So I’m listening to this nonsense, and it had me thinking once again about my frequent observation that “Conservatism is a mental disorder“. I’ve never seen any group of people with such a deep…and totally baseless… inferiority complex as Conservative Republicans. They see biases where none exist. The world is out to get them. It’s “right-thinking” them against the “permissive Librul” world that wants everyone to smoke pot and have lesbians pass out condoms to 2nd graders.

Here are my Top Ten things Conservative Republicans are scared to death of:

1. First, it was Communism. Ronald Reagan is their hero from saving us from “the Godless Commies!”
2. Today, it’s terrorists… namely fighting them in Baghdad so we don’t have to fight them on the mean streets of Gary, Indiana.
3. Iran, they want to give nuclear bombs to Osama bin Laden. The fact Iran is Shi’ite and al Qaeda is Sunni… the “Hatfield’s & McCoy’s” of the Middle East… is of no concern to them. Them A’rabs all stick together, ya’know. And beware, because you know Barack Osama is a secret Muslim. Don’t let the hysteria over the rantings of his Christian Minister for the past twenty years fool you!
4. The “liberul media”… the one that refuses to tell us about all the “good” happening in Iraq… like Fox does (actually, Fox doesn’t; covering Iraq less than any other network.)
5. Mexicans… illegal immigrants especially, causing crime, stealing our jobs, signing up for welfare & food stamps (note: they take our jobs AND apply for welfare), and, worst of all, refuse to speak English. They want to turn America into another Mexico.
6. The Gays and their “Gay Agenda”: to lure your children into the homosexual lifestyle… an abomination in the face of God. Allowing gays to marry belittles the institution of marriage. However, Britney Spears getting married & divorced in a 24 hour period apparently doesn’t.
7. Oh, and there’s a “War on Christmas“, too! If the 18 year old sales-girl can’t tell if you’re Jewish, Muslim or Catholic, and dare use the generic “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” to avoid offending customers, it’s because the company told her to in order to push their “Liberal secularist agenda” upon poor oppressed God-fearing Christians.
8. “Socialized Medicine” - cut-rate medical care brought to you by the people that gave us the DMV.
9. Hysteria over “Global Warming” will bankrupt American businesses with all the costly new regulations they’ll be forced to pay for. Millions of jobs will be lost as coal, oil and gasoline industries are abolished overnight. If the “Libruls” have their way, we’ll all be lighting our homes with solar powered flashlights.
10. Having their guns taken away… probably the closest thing panic-stricken Conservative have to a Security blanket. When you live in constant fear of the outside world, having more guns than Cheeto crumbs in your beard is an absolute must.

These same Conservatives that once told us never to trust the Federal Government, now allow them to wiretap our phones and search our homes without a warrant, arrest American citizens without due process, and engage in “Nation Building” (once synonymous with “Democratic President”) at a cost of $356 million dollars a day.

PLEASE! PROTECT ME FROM THE EVIL-DOERS! TAP MY PHONES! READ MY MAIL! WHATEVER YOU WANT! JUST DON’T TAKE MY GUNS AWAY!

Liberals & Progressives believe that people are basically good. That restrictions should be placed on corporations so that they don’t infringe on the rights of people.

Conservatives believe the exact opposite: that people are, at their core, evil, and left unchecked, will commit evil… and when it comes to Republicans, maybe they have a point. When the Republicans controlled Congress, they allowed President Bush unchecked power, signing statements that circumvented the very bills he was signing into law, his Administration crafted The Patriot Act, that gave the President unheard of unconstitutional power; to tap our phones without a warrant and even arrest an American citizen and hold them for years without charge, never even seeing a lawyer. Conservatives therefore believe in mechanized “systems”… like “Capitalism” and “the free market”… that on their own with no human interference, will always end up producing the desired outcome.

People are “evil”, but companies simply do what the free market asks of them with no agenda of their own. Saddam = person = evil. Contractors in Iraq = “free enterprise” = pure capitalism with no agenda of their own except to make a profit, and therefore, “good”. Conservatives believe it is “people” who must be regulated, not corporations.

This also helps explain why “religion” is such a big part of the Republican platform. “People are Evil”, and without constant oversight, will engage in subversive behavior. Having an “all seeing, all knowing God” watching your every move and threatening you with punishment (”eternal damnation”) if you misbehave, by a God with no agenda, free of humanly frailties, matches up very nicely with the Conservative belief that people, left unchecked, will choose to do bad things.

Suddenly, we’ve come full circle. Constant oversight, constant monitoring, threat of unimaginable punishment if you “misbehaves”… sound like any Administration you might know?

And you wonder why this country is so screwed up? Just look at the people in charge: paranoid, xenophobic, racist, homophones that believe the worst in people.

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- Mugsy

I have been a long-time member of the “Democratic Underground”. Shortly after Hurricane Katrina, I constructed a “tagline” (a “signature” quote or saying) to be placed at the end of all my posts, summing up the disastrous record of Bush Administration in just a few lines:

!!! 8600+ Americans DEAD !!!
(3,000 on 9/11. 4,000 in Iraq. 1,600 in Katrina.)
National debt: $9.19 Trillion and counting.
$3.00 gas; $100 oil.
Osama bin Laden still on the loose.

---

* MISSION ACCOMPLISHED *

 
 
When I first created this tagline, the deathtoll was “6500+“, and I updated it with every grim 500 “milestone”, relying on the “Iraq Coalition Casualty Count” website icasualties.org for the official count. And with the latest “4,000″ figure, I updated it to reflect the new figure.

So here I am, looking at this unfathomable and nauseating number, when a thought occurred to me: Everyone is talking about the 4,000th soldier, but is that just Iraq? What about “that other war”… Afghanistan… which is now in it’s seventh year with no end in sight?

So I checked and in fact, Afghanistan is NOT included in that count. Another 490 American soldiers have given their lives in that other incompetently run war. I realized that my tagline had been woefully understating the true disaster that is the Presidency of George W. Bush:

!!! 9100+ Americans DEAD !!!
(3,000 on 9/11. 4,000 in Iraq. 500 in Afgh, 1,600 in Katrina.)
National debt: $9.19 Trillion and counting.
$3.00 gas; $100 oil.
Osama bin Laden still on the loose.

---

* MISSION ACCOMPLISHED *

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- Mugsy

Happy “Mission Accomplished” Day!

Five years ago March 19th, George Bush invaded Iraq with an estimated 250,000 troops. By May, that number was down to 150,000. Today, that number is approximately 158,000… 8,000 more troops today than after “Mission Accomplished” on May 1, 2003.

And with that, the White House had announced expectations of withdrawing troops from Iraq:

• In late 2003, the Pentagon was confident we would be able to reduce the number of troops in Iraq sometime in early 2004.
• But when violence didn’t subside like they hoped, those plans were scrapped in 2004.
• In 2005, things were going so well, 2006 looked promising for bringing some troops home.
• But by the time 2006 arrived, things didn’t look so good anymore.
• They hinted at troop reductions again in 2007 with the “success” of “the Surge“.
• But that plan is to reduce the number of troops to “pre-Surge” levels and hope John McCain wins so they can keep the troops there for the next hundred years.

Would someone PLEASE remind these people that 40% of the troops they have fighting this “war” in Iraq AREN’T FULL TIME MILITARY? They are National Guard and Reservists, “weekend warriors” with jobs and families, that joined The Guard to fill sandbags in a hurricane. If they wanted to fight in a warzone, trapped by “stop loss” to play full-time soldier for five years, they would of joined the Army. It frustrates me to no one that the fact so many National Guard and Reservists are STILL there today, taken away from their families and regular jobs, being forced to serve as if they were “Regular Army”.

A 100 year old law appropriately entitled “The Dick Act” required that the “Ready Reserve” (decommissioned soldiers, the Guard and the Reserves) be available to serve in the U.S. Military should the Army command it. In 1920, that law was amended to give the “Commander-in-Chief” the power to call up National Guard and Reservists to active duty, but only “in a national emergency declared by Congress“.

Remember that Congress NEVER declared war against Iraq. President Bush assumed that right carried over in the authority given to him after 9/11 to pursue al Qaeda and “threats against the United States”. I think one would be hard-pressed to make the case that what is going on in Iraq today presents any “imminent threat” to the United States that justifies calling up the Ready Reserve and forcing them to serve as full-time soldiers.

The “Dick Act” also limits the time that Reservists can be forced to serve to just “24 months”, after which they must be released from service and sent home. But since no one is challenging President Bush’s assertion that Iraq is a “national emergency” and “imminent threat”, he has been allowed to “stop loss” these weekend warriors indefitely, LONG beyond that 24 month statute of limitations.

Republicans (and the Media) like to “remind” us at every opportunity that “the Surge worked! Violence is down dramatically in Iraq.” Of course violence is down in Iraq, we’ve essentially put 23,000 more cops on the beat… U.S. troops roaming the streets of Iraq are playing cop. And entire regions have been “ethnically segregated”, so there is less Sunni/Shi’ite infighting to control.

If you remember, “The Surge” was deemed necessary following an explosion of violence in late 2006 with record troop fatalities month after month. The White House blamed the uncontrolled spike in violence on “too few troops”. So, with that said, will there EVER be a situation where someone in this Administration WON’T argue that “fewer troops” might be “too few”, sticking us right back where we were at the end of 2006? We can’t bring the troops home when things are bad because “we can’t abandon the Iraqis” and “it will look like a retreat”. And we can’t bring troops home when things are good for fear of loosing all of our advances. So then what? This is the best example I’ve seen yet that Bush’s Iraq policy is doomed to failure: “an inability to bring the troops home regardless of conditions on the ground” multiplied by “a total lack of political progress”, equals “failure”.

As I’ve bemoaned here on M.R.S. several times before, I frequently find myself confronting “Bush Apologists” when approving Comments to my video archive on YouTube. Last week, I encountered two young “never retreat” Republican kids responding to one video, both arguing that withdrawing our troops from Iraq would leave Iraq in chaos. I reminded them that simply because we leave doesn’t mean Iraq would be defenseless. “Iraq’s security forces are larger than the number of U.S. troops in Iraq. And once we leave, the insurgents won’t have as many targets to shoot at, bringing the violence down to a number Iraq can control on its own.” They liked that answer, and I honestly believe the thought that Iraqi’s could defend their own country themselves ever occurred to them.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney argued before the war that one of the “threats” Saddam Hussein posed was that he “controlled all that oil”, suggesting he could use that supply to manipulate prices and hurt the global economy. As recently as 2006, Cheney stated:

“Think where we’d be if he was still there. He’d be sitting on top of a big pile of cash, because he’d have $65 and $70 oil.”

$70 oil! Whew, thank goodness we got rid of him! Just imagine what the world would be like if Saddam were still in power playing cat & mouse with thousands of international inspectors making his life miserable, while the price of gas climbed to over $2.50 a gallon! <Shudder>.

But at least life is better for the Iraqis.

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- Mugsy

This was really quite extraordinary… so much so that it deserves a special Sunday Evening edition of Mugsy’s Rap Sheet.

The Bush Administration’s Secretary of the Treasury, Henry “Hank” Paulson, did a guest spot on two Sunday News talkshows this weekend to address the rapidly sinking economy. On both shows, he was asked about the falling dollar, which fuels inflation, has pushed oil over $100 a barrel and gold over $1,000 an ounce:

Really quite remarkable.

And just why was Secretary Paulson asked to appear on, not one, but two Sunday shows? Here are some economic highlights of the past week:

• The brokerage firm Bear/Sterns, worth over $1.5 Billion last year with stock trading at over $170/share, looked to the government for an “emergency bailout” last week to avoid bankruptcy, and was purchased by rival JP.Morgan/Chase for $270 million ($2/share) over the weekend thanks in part to a giant financial bailout from the U.S. government.
• The U.S. dollar fell to a record low against the Euro. Once worth more than the Euro when George Bush entered office, the greenback fell to just $0.63 against the Euro when markets closed on Friday.
• Fears over the value of the U.S. dollar and an American economy which appears to be headed for… if not already in… a recession, spiked investment in gold, pushing it above $1,000 an ounce for the first time in history.
• The DOW went on a roller-coaster ride, falling 147 points the previous Friday, another 153 points the following Monday, skyrocketed 416 points on Tuesday, fluctuating another 11 points before loosing another 194 on Friday to close back below the 12,000 mark (11,951.09). I remind you again that the Clinton peak eight years ago was 11,723.
• Foreclosures in the U.S. are reported to be “Up over 60% versus just one year ago.”
• Oil hit a new record high nearly every day this past week, closing at a record high of $111/barrel.
• The record high oil prices pushed gasoline to a record high national average of $3.35 per gallon of Regular.

Perhaps this is why Secretary Paulson felt the need to hit the airwaves and reassure the townsfolk that there is “no need for alarm”.

Since oil is traded in dollars and not Euros, the decline in the worth of the dollar make oil more expensive. But with Euro’s being worth nearly 40% more than the dollar, the price per barrel of oil for Europeans is closer to only $60, having a far milder impact on their economy. Ditto for the price of gold. And a more valuable Euro makes the purchase of American real estate an absolute bargain in the current depressed mortgage market. British and other European companies are snapping up struggling American corporations for a song while their markets continue to stay afloat. And American retailers openly court the British Pound and Europe’s Euro because of it’s increased worth.

The National Debt, while still inconceivably outrageous, would be closer to $6Trillion instead of ten if the dollar were not so depressed.

And speaking of “depressed”, I think I’d better stop here before I am too.

PS: I appear to be having some video trouble. Let me know if the video link stops working by posting in the Comments. - Mugsy)

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- Mugsy

On Sunday, the Vatican released an updated… “modernized” if you will… list of The New Seven Deadly Sins. Pope Benedict XVI felt it was time to update the famous 500 year old list of “Seven Deadly Sins”… Anger, Sloth, Greed, Vanity, Pride, Gluttony & Envy/Lust… to reflect modern times. Now, I’m not one to point fingers, but if you were a good Christian trying to decide which political Party best reflected the Vatican’s values, what decision might you come to after reading a list like this:

#1: Causing Pollution - I find it fascinating that the Vatican has not only taken a position on the environment, but has concluded THE EXACT OPPOSITE of the likes of the late Rev. Jery Falwell and the Religious Right in this country that has actively sought to disparage Environmentalists and the subject of Global Warming, claiming that God promised that “the Earth’s resources were here for us to use and could not be used up”. Apparently, the Vatican believes caring for the Earth and all God’s creations is what God wants. If I were a devote Christian debating whose translation of the Bible *I* would trust most: Falwell’s vs The Pope, sorry Jerry, you and your Conservative smog-belchers are on the wrong side of what God wants.

#2: Social Injustice - How many ways can this be expressed? Unequal justice for the Rich vs. The Poor; believing in Social Programs like “Social Security”, “National Healthcare”, “Minimum Wage”… or do we look at it from the perspective of “Torturing prisoners at Gitmo & Abu Ghraib”. Might we look at the disparity in the number of “poor & low-income Americans” serving in Iraq vs the percentage of troops hailing from affluent families or members on Congress? Or perhaps we should consider the treatment of survivors of Hurricane Katrina?

#3: Causing Poverty - “Nationwide, nearly 6% of all mortgages were delinquent at the end of the fourth quarter and just over 2% were in foreclosure, the Mortgage Bankers Assn. reported.” “65,000 Americans lost their jobs last month”, the second month in a row that the country reported net job losses. The dollar has lost 50% of its value against the Euro since George Bush entered office, and the collapsing dollar is pushing the National Debt to a heart-in-the-throat TEN TRILLION DOLLARS and has sent the price of oil gushering past a once-unthinkable $100 a barrel, which simultaneously drives up the costs of food production & delivery, pushing up prices in the grocery store as well as the gas pump.

#4: Obscene wealth - Two words: Halliburton and Exxon. Likewise, tax cuts for the rich on the backs of the poor has resulted in “the top 5% of all Americans own 50% of all the wealth” in this country. The top 1% owns 38% of all the wealth in the United States” (yes, that means that other 4% makes up only 12%). The remaining 95% of Americans make up only 50% of all the wealth in this country. Toss in that lucky 4%, and 99% of all Americans account for only 62% of all the wealth in this country.

#5: Taking drugs - Okay, this isn’t exactly a “platform” for either Party, but it does call into question whether or not you should be getting your political insight from Rush ”Oxycontin” Limbaugh.

#6: Genetic modification - If one were to assume in #1 that “caring for all God’s creations” is what God (and the Vatican) has in mind here, then I think it is safe to assume the Vatican is opposed to genetic modification, not only of humans, but of food… plants & animals… as afronts to God’s design. Since neither Party opposes an all-out ban on ALL gentic modification, this “sin” is a definite wash when it comes to Party preferences.

#7: Human experimentation - I would argue that there are many ways to read this. Certainly, subjecting a person to potentially damaging medical experiments is not supported by either Party. But the Vatican doesn’t single out “medical” experimentation specifically. What about “social” experimentation like George Bush’s “experiment” to “transform the Middle East”? What of Conservative “experimentation” with “free market economics” that has done more to drive down wages and ship jobs over seas than any benefit gained from corporate profits in the name of “creating jobs”? Might we also consider “torture as a means of eliciting intel from prisoners”, a form of “human experimentation”?

I defy any good, God fearing Catholic to look at that list and conclude that The Republican Party best represents their faith. What do you think?

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- Mugsy

I stayed up late tonight to watch the returns here in Texas for the Primary results. Barack Obama led early, but Hillary Clinton slowly took a slight lead and clung to it for the rest of the night.

I lurked on a popular blog through most of the night and found myself in the surprising (and uncomfortable) position of defending Hillary Clinton against a barrage of childish name-calling, profanity and malapropisms towards Senator Clinton by throngs of disappointed “Obamaniacs”.

The attacks ranged from the personal (”F***, Ohio! F***, Texas!), the nonsensical (one person comparing Hillary to “Zell Miller”), to the bizarre (”I’d vote for Bush again before I’d vote for Hillary!”).

Many of the reasons given for this sudden fury towards Hillary were based upon unsubstantiated accusations that she/her-campaign were behind a series of racist attacks, photos & emails, all of which have Republican origins. The irony is that Obama supporters are using the same “short-on-facts, jumping to conclusions” justification to trash Ms. Clinton that they are complaining was used against Mr. Obama.

This is dangerous, folks. Now, any longtime reader of this blog knows I am no Hillary supporter. Nor am I an Obama fan. But the Obama supporters definitely trend towards the younger set, and they are handling this election with all the maturity of… well… spoiled brats. Kids, too young to realize that Presidential campaigns typically aren’t wrapped up by Spring. Hell, as I wrote last August, it wasn’t until the late 60’s that we even knew who the candidate would be until the Presidential Conventions in the Summer.

If Hillary does see a sudden reversal of fortune and somehow becomes the nominee, we need rally behind her. Realize that she… not Obama… has won SIX of the eight largest states: California, Texas, New York and Ohio (Florida & Michigan still very much up in the air as their Primaries were discounted) and with Pennsylvania still to come, while the only big state Obama has won is his home state of Illinois (Georgia and South Carolina round out the top ten, both for Obama). That’s nothing to dismiss. As Democrats attack Democrats, you can just hear McCain’s Campaign Manager smacking his lips repeating, “Divide & Conquer, Divide & Conquer!” The surest way to ensure another Republican is elected President (and enduring another catastrophic four years of Bush-enomics), is for a divided Democratic Party to act like a bunch of spoiled brats and threaten to stay home come November or “vote for Nader!” just because their candidate didn’t get the nomination.

No need to worry about how either candidate will do in November against the Republicans. Forget what “the polls” say and just look at these numbers from Ohio last night:

With barely a 1/3rd of all precincts reporting, BOTH Hillary AND Obama have EACH raked in more votes than ALL the Republican candidates COMBINED! The final tallys:

Ohio: 2.2 million people showed up to vote in the Democratic Primary vs barely 1 million in the Republican Primary.

Texas: 2.8 million Democrats vs. 1.3 million Republicans… NEARLY TRIPLE the number of voters… in a VERY Red state.

Hey, if you have any doubts about whether the turnout in Texas was big, just look at the percentage turnout in THIS local race in Houston:

<chuckle>

So relax people. A longer race is a GOOD thing. It vets the candidates, brings up issues and prepares them for what’s to come as we near November.

ADDENDUM: Comparing Hillary to Bush? Really, people??? I don’t envision THIS being done to a President Hillary:

“The small towns of Brattleboro and Marlboro, Vermont passed proclamations Tuesday that if President Bush or Vice President Cheney visit their towns, they are to be ARRESTED or extradite them for prosecution elsewhere, for violating the Constitution!”

Time to get real folks. Hillary is not the anti-Christ.

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- Mugsy

The founder of Neo-Conservatism, William F. Buckley, passed away today. The TV news opined about Buckley as being “The Founder of Modern Conservatism” as well as his magazine “The National Review“, which Ronald Reagan once called “his favorite magazine”.

If you don’t recognize William F Buckley, you would almost assuredly recognize his distinctive way of talking. Not an insult, Buckley’s speech always reminded me of a rich English billionaire that just jumped out of the swimming pool with his nose full of water: “Hfaw, faw, wah-ha-fah.” If you were to accuse someone of “putting on aires” for the way they talked, they’d sound like Buckley.

But in all the Conservative nostalgia served up this day, the media was reluctant to report that Buckley renounced the Grand Experiment that was Iraq in a 2006 column in his own magazine, The National Review.

The Associated Press dedicated a grand total of two sentences to Buckley’s denouncement of the war in Iraq, which is better than NBC News (video on the page) did, omitting any mention whatsoever of his recent criticisms of Iraq and Neo-Conservatism in general. It is because Buckley was SO Conservative that he often found himself on the outs with the modern Neo-Conservatives in and around the current White House. One thing modern Conservatives DID inherit from Buckley, a vapid disdain for all things “Liberal” and occasionally allowing his racist/sexist/misogynistic attitudes to leak out unchecked.

So, while Conservatives genuflect tonight over the passing of the man that gave us the modern Conservative movement, I think it is only proper that we go back and revisit Buckley’s 2006 criticism of the folly that was Iraq:

It Didn’t Work

[…] Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans. […]

The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, elucidates on the complaint against Americans. It is not only that the invaders are American, it is that they are “Zionists.” It would not be surprising to learn from an anonymously cited American soldier that he can understand why Saddam Hussein was needed to keep the Sunnis and the Shiites from each others’ throats.

A problem for American policymakers — for President Bush, ultimately — is to cope with the postulates and decide how to proceed.

One of these postulates, from the beginning, was that the Iraqi people, whatever their tribal differences, would suspend internal divisions in order to get on with life in a political structure that guaranteed them religious freedom.

The accompanying postulate was that the invading American army would succeed in training Iraqi soldiers and policymkers to cope with insurgents bent on violence.

This last did not happen. And the administration has, now, to cope with failure. […]

Mr. Bush has a very difficult internal problem here because to make the kind of concession that is strategically appropriate requires a mitigation of policies he has several times affirmed in high-flown pronouncements. His challenge is to persuade himself that he can submit to a historical reality without forswearing basic commitments in foreign policy.

He will certainly face the current development as military leaders are expected to do: They are called upon to acknowledge a tactical setback, but to insist on the survival of strategic policies.

Yes, but within their own counsels, different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat.

[…]

(Emphasis mine, pointing out Buckley’s recognition of Bush’s inability to acknowledge his own failures.)

But Buckley’s criticism of the Neo-Cons in Washington did not end with Iraq, nor can any Neo-Conservative say, “Yeah, but that was before the Surge!”

Here is Buckley less than a year ago (April, 2007) on the subject of a dying GOP:

The Waning of the GOP

The political problem of the Bush administration is grave, possibly beyond the point of rescue. The opinion polls are savagely decisive on the Iraq question. About 60 percent of Americans wish the war ended — wish at least a timetable for orderly withdrawal. What is going on in Congress is in the nature of accompaniment. The vote in Congress is simply another salient in the war against war in Iraq. Republican forces, with a couple of exceptions, held fast against the Democrats’ attempt to force Bush out of Iraq even if it required fiddling with the Constitution. President Bush will of course veto the bill, but its impact is critically important in the consolidation of public opinion. It can now accurately be said that the legislature, which writes the people’s laws, opposes the war.

[…]

When the Romans were challenged by Christianity, Rome fell. The generation of Christians moved by their faith overwhelmed the regimented reserves of the Roman state. It was four years ago that Mr. Cheney first observed that there was a real fear that each fallen terrorist leads to the materialization of another terrorist. What can a “surge,” of the kind we are now relying upon, do to cope with endemic disease? The parallel even comes to mind of the eventual collapse of Prohibition, because there wasn’t any way the government could neutralize the appetite for alcohol, or the resourcefulness of the freeman in acquiring it.

[…]

(I encourage you to read the full article.)

So on this day when Neo-Conservatives morn the man whose movement gave us Ronald Reagan, let us not forget that even this Conservative monarch could see the devastation the Bush Doctrine was having on his brand of Conservativism.