Can the perps see out? Naturally there is no way to tell for sure, but to speculate that they can not see out very clearly might explain a large part of the stumblebumism.
On the other hand, one might equally well guess that what the Party OnePercenters see where the rest of us looking in see "windows" is mirrors. That is how one-way glass works in the police movies, I believe, and to fancy the bozos always preenin' their wunnerful selves inside those mysterious boxes of theirs when they ought to be workin' (or at least bigmanagin') would explain a lot also. For instance, it would explain Little Brother's and Dr. Limbaugh's Yalie cheerleadin' from yesterday,
| THE PRESIDENT: Some note that Al-Qaeda in Iraq did not exist until the US invasion and argue that it is a problem of our own making. The argument follows the flawed logic that terrorism is caused by American actions. RUSH: Right on, right on. THE PRESIDENT: Iraq's not the reason that the terrorists are at war with us. RUSH: Right on, right on. THE PRESIDENT: We were not in Iraq when the terrorists bombed the World Trade Center in 1993. RUSH: Right on, right on. THE PRESIDENT: We were not in Iraq when they attacked our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. RUSH: Right on, right on. THE PRESIDENT: We were not in Iraq when they attacked the USS Cole in 2000, and we were not in Iraq on September the 11th, 2001. Our action to remove Saddam Hussein did not start the terrorist violence. An American withdrawal from Iraq would not end it. |
Little Brother looks "through" the "window" that the Party-blessed Land of Two Rivers -- the placid stream of Peace and the gushin' torrent of Freedom[1] -- ought to be on the other side of, and what he "sees" is chiefly that terrorism is not caused by American actions. That is to say, Little Brother must be lookin' at Little Brother, not at the former Iraq, when he emits noises like those -- although admittedly he does seem to see the former acts of Bill Clinton and other top donkeys not causin' terrorism also. "Thank you very much, Mr. President." (Some of his Party base-and-vile would be happy to set him straight about that overgenerous detail.) To refer to a "mirror" in this connection is therefore rhetorically warrantable. [2][3]
However the "screens" on the outside of the Bozo Box are more worth discussing than the "mirrors" on the inside, if only because outside is where we humble find ourselves. Crawfordology is no easy science; most practitioners seem to think that mentioning Neocomrade K. Rove's name is about as far as one can go for sure in this misdirection. However there may have been a significant break-through quite recently, and it goes like this :
| President Bush announced: "Many of the spectacular car bombings and killings you see are as a result of al Qaeda -- the very same folks that attacked us on September the 11th." ... [L]ately the media has been pushing back a bit on this particular Bush deception. On July 11, Jonathan S. Landay noted for McClatchy Newspapers that the group calling itself al-Qaeda in Iraq "didn't emerge until 2004." Michael Abramowitz wrote in [t]he Washington Post that while the group's "militants are inspired by bin Laden, intelligence analysts say the Iraqi group is composed overwhelmingly of Iraqis and does not take direction from bin Laden." And the Los Angeles Times reported: "A Pentagon report late last year . . . said that Shiite Muslim militias, not Al Qaeda, were the largest threat to security in Iraq." Not long after New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt's scolded his own paper for not confronting Bush on the issue, Times reporters Michael R. Gordon and Jim Rutenberg wrote in a front-page story that Bush's assertions "have greatly oversimplified the nature of the insurgency in Iraq and its relationship with the Qaeda leadership." And the coverage of Tuesday's intelligence report ... was full of skepticism over the White House's attempted conflation. So what a stroke of luck it was for the White House when, just a day later, the chief military spokesman in Iraq revealed a dramatic story that would appear to support the president's new favorite talking point: Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner chose yesterday to announce the arrest -- two weeks ago -- of a man he called a leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who he said had told interrogators about a close operational relationship between his group and Osama bin Laden's inner circle. Was the timing coincidental? And is Bergner credible? Until recently he was a member of the White House's national security staff, holding the title of senior director for Iraq. Since taking up his new post in May, Bergner has made a series of politically charged allegations against both al Qaeda and Iran, many of which have been basically unverifiable. |
Neocomrade Gen. K. Bergner turns out to be such as only another militant extremist Republican would be likely to credit:
| But there was no evidence to back up Bergner's claims. And as Mike Nizza pointed out on the New York Times Web site, Bergner showed at least some willingness to make insinuations based not on intelligence, but on his imagination. Consider the following exchange: Bergner: "Our intelligence reveals that senior leadership in Iran is aware of this activity. . . . " Question: "Can you define senior leadership?" Bergner: "I think I'll leave it at that." Question: "Would you exclude the supreme leader?" Bergner: "I'll leave it at 'senior leadership in Iran'" Question: "Put it this way: Do you think it's possible that he doesn't know?" Bergner: "That would be hard to imagine." At least one report since then appears to cast some doubt on Bergner's claim of an Iranian role in the Karbala attack. As Gregg Zoroya wrote on July 12 for USA Today: "A previously undisclosed Army investigation into an audacious January attack in Karbala that killed five U.S. soldiers concludes that Iraqi police working alongside American troops colluded with insurgents." |
There is more where that came from, if you are interested in Gen. Bergner personally as well as in his structural or Bozo Box role. As to the latter, it is not simply that students can now speak of "Rove and Bergner" to personify Big Party twistification rather than Rove alone. More important is to notice that prior to the present state of their aggression, the cowpokers did not think they needed to dispatch a Party neocomrade like K. Bergner to preside as commissar over the Five O'Clock Follies at New Baghdád. They were content with whatever spin the violence pros of the Green Zone Officers Club chose to supply.
It would thus appear that Something Went Wrong. What the Bernard Lewis can it have been? Can it be that Little Brother does not altogether trust his good ol' buddy "David"? [4]
____
[1] Placid Euphrates, arrow-like Tigris, dont' you know?
[2] There is certainly a Sci-Fi display screen vision of Peaceful Freedumbia inside the box also. It is described in this morning's New York Times . The Bozo Box's architect may have thought that some of its seemin' windows should be analog mirrors, whereas others should present digital fabrications. (Who knows, perhaps a few really are windows, lookin' out? If so, however, stained or rose-tinted glass seems more likely than the vulgar sort.)
There was also a mirror aspect to Little Brother's choice of audience yesterday:
| At a time when Mr. Bush is trying to beat back calls for withdrawal from Iraq, the speech at Charleston Air Force Base reflected concern at the White House over criticism that he is focusing on the wrong terrorist threat. |
No discouragin' words to be expected from those deer and antelope!
[3] Some of the Big Party's "conservative" "intellectual" tank-think señoritos might look into "terrorism is not caused by American actions" a little more closely than they ever have yet. As a soothin' syrup for the immoderate self-esteemin' of Greater Texans the product can scarcely be improved upon, but as geopolitics there are certain difficulties. I mean, there are difficulties if one assumes with the señoritos that it is true. They never seem to worry whether their own dogma might not imply that globoterror simply cannot be influenced by any American or Big Management Party actions whatsoever, very extreme actions along Hiroshima-Nagasaki lines possibly excepted.
The bushogenic quagmire in the former Iraq could be plausibly maintained by some cheap anti-Party sophist to establish that the neocomrades cannot cure globoterror any more than they can cause it. That's rather too simplistic a view for Mr. Bones and me, because even when the dogma is extended in that fashion, we are still in a figurative Hall of Mirrors, more interested in our own navels than in what is happening out in the boondocks of the world. But God knows best.
[4] That would be Dr. Gen. D. Petraeus of West Point and Princeton, of course. Advanced students of Crawfordology may want to follow up this lead:
| Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald chronicles Gen. David Petraeus's "track record of highly dubious claims over the last several years about Iraq" . |
I think it a bit of a red herring myself, however. His Braniacness must be at least a fellow traveler with Grant's Old Party to have taken his present job (and fourth star) at all, but is he enough of a neocomrade to lie for the good old cause? "Not proved" is the only sound verdict. A good deal of Mr. Greenwald's brief for the prosecution amounts to no more than that a braniac's crystal ball need not work much better than anybody else's.
A stronger case might have been mustered up on a far lesser charge: does "David" really understand his Boy's and his Party's Peaceful Freedumbia well enough to implement his own nifty MacnamarioPetraean neocounterinsurgency satisfactorily in it? Probably not, think I, and the strongest evidence is that he puts up with the amazin' D. Kilcullen, who is manifestly clueless and ought to be shipped home to his kangaroos forthwith. However that, and the rest of the really solid evidence against "David," involves technical questions of the violence profession rather than any highly dubious claimin' in the path of Dubya.
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