Obama/Pakistan
 

Sending in covert black ops into a sovereign friendly nation to conduct assassinations.

Which party's nod is he running for - because last I checked, the KOS kids find such actions an impeachable offense.

Obama/Pakistan
 

This is what he said:

"As President, I would make the hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid to Pakistan conditional, and I would make our conditions clear: Pakistan must make substantial progress in closing down the training camps, evicting foreign fighters, and preventing the Taliban from using Pakistan as a staging area for attacks in Afghanistan.

I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges. But let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will.

And Pakistan needs more than F-16s to combat extremism. As the Pakistani government increases investment in secular education to counter radical madrasas, my Administration will increase America's commitment. We must help Pakistan invest in the provinces along the Afghan border, so that the extremists' program of hate is met with one of hope. And we must not turn a blind eye to elections that are neither free nor fair -- our goal is not simply an ally in Pakistan, it is a democratic ally. "

Is there an implication of an invasion? Maybe, but I don't see it any more than I see an implication of invasion in any typical tough talk from a President or candidate.


What happens if, w/o Musharref's permission, we bomb Waziristan? What's the consequence? I agree that we cannot be seen asking and receiving Musharref's permission to attack a portion of his country, but come on . . . is it reasonable for us to not, if we know where OBL is? Isn't that a core goal of the WoT? Doesn't winning involve breaking some eggs?

Obama/Pakistan
 

not sure pakistan quite fits that description. No more than Iraq in 1980, at least.

Obama/Pakistan
 

That's my point--I've seen/heard many complaints about Obama's stance coming from the right. What the hell is their problem? Isn't that what they want to happen? Is it just partisanship?

Obama/Pakistan
 

nor France for that matter.

Obama/Pakistan
 

What you're experiencing is what we call in other contexts "homosexual panic."

Obama/Pakistan
 

it's been a while, but you were the one who thought 9/11 was a simple crime, weren't you?

Obama/Pakistan
 

Yup, preferably charged in juvenile court or handled as a civil matter. In addition, I felt the Cold War should have been handled by a referral to Triple-A Commercial, and the Roanoke Colonists could have only benefitted from community conflict resolution with the Croatan.

Obama/Pakistan
 

I like the idea. I just think that it's a more effective tactic if one odesn't get caught.

Actual AP headline: "Bush Visits Wrecked Minnesota Bridge"

I read the article and there was absolute no real evidence of causation. Fuckin' liberal media.

I love atticus, but ultimately his opinions are no more evidence than Ty's blogs. Here's the news:

• U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, suggested Bush administration spending on the Iraq war may have crimped funding for domestic projects such as road and bridge construction, and for such infrastructure projects as new levees for New Orleans.
  
  "We've spent $500 billion in Iraq and we have bridges falling down in this country," Klobuchar told MSNBC. "I see a connection between messed-up priorities."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070803/...ge_collapse_dc

Apres nous, le deluge.
 

Speaking of new levees for New Orleans, here's an excellent long piece in Time describing the sorry state of the Army Corps of Engineers and the lower Mississippi. No one comes off looking good.

caption, please
 

caption, please
 

"And this is the same kind of armored vehicle we've given our troops..."

caption, please
 

Hamid, when we get back to the residence, could you take care of my bag?

caption, please
 

"You know, Tom Carvel built this when he got dinged from that place down the road. A little bit of history for you there, Hammy. Heh."

Obama/Pakistan
 

You think anyone gets any at YearlyKos? I'm thinking its Trekkie type of deal... Anywhere I can get photos? Google image isn;t coughing up much.

Obama/Pakistan
 

I kind of like Hillary today. It always works that way when a candidate gets Paul Krugman's ire.

Obama/Pakistan
 

Jesus. I guess this is what three glasses of Merlot gets you.

Obama/Pakistan
 

Some of us worship Jesus as our God. This board is not as much a free form attack as the board you typically infest. If you do come here, I hope you at least try to bring some content, but regardless of my hopes, I must insist that you not offend the religous beliefs of those who post here.

Obama/Pakistan
 

I was so disturbed by Sebastian's post that I cried out in an anguished plea to the Son of God. Looking back, perhaps it was a bit rash of me to seek answers from Him about what should be written off as a bit of Merlot-induced rambling. But I feel things strongly -- that just comes with being a man of faith. For that, I am not sorry.

Obama/Pakistan
 

and if your blasphemy so conflicts Atticus that he leaves again, would you be sorry then?

Obama/Pakistan
 

It is not blasphemy to speak publicly to my Lord. But apparently, on this board, one's faith is something to be kept behind closed doors. One must pray quiety and in the dark or risk persecution at the hands of those who believe it is wrong to not be ashamed about one's relationship with one's Saviour. I am accustomed to more tolerant envrions. Once again, I must take my leave of the Politics Board. I apologize if any of you found my honest and open spirituality to be alienating or unacceptable. Except that I am not sorry.

All Are Welcome
 

Please, Brother Flower, do not hide your light beneath a bushel, for we are a big tent here.

All Are Welcome
 

Don't play God Wonk. If it is meant for flower to leave, far be it for us to try to change that.

Obama/Pakistan
 

Celibacy sucks, doesn't it?

Fake, But Accurate
 

Alas, poor TNR....

But none of this matters, right? We all just "know" he was telling the "truth" right? I mean, watch Full Metal Jacket, for instance.

Obama/Pakistan
 

Fool. You cannot petition the Lord with prayer.

Fake, But Accurate
 

Zoomie, duus and Peter Principle have my proxy, if anyone cares.

Fake, But Accurate
 

Damn! Now that I know that three articles I never read written by some guy I never heard of were just made up, I guess it's only fair that I Support The War, which is probably going really great.

Fake, But Accurate
 

If the last six years have taught us anything, surely it's that if the Weekly Standard runs a story based on an anonymous military source, it's got to be true.

Fake, But Accurate
 

All these lying bastards with their political agendas. I just don't know which ones to believe. If only there were a simple quiz I could take....

Fake, But Accurate
 

I had no idea that Yglesias had so many pseudonyms.

Fake, But Accurate
 

Of course they do. "Fake!", but "Accurate!"

Fake, But Accurate
 

None of them said anything of the sort, but then you don't really care about that sort of accuracy, do you?

Fake, But Accurate
 

zoomie:
"Only thing he's admitted he got wrong was the incident mocking a disfigured woman occurred in Kuwait, not Iraq, but DID occur. All other incidents remain unrefuted."

me:
Patently untrue about the other refuations, and it ignores the larger point that the Kuwait story, assuming it was indeed true, has nothing to do with the "effects of war"

---

duus:
""The claims?" All of them? All the stories were invented from the whole cloth? or some of the claims? Nothing in the stories were true? What kind of quote is that? For example, did Scott Thomas mention in any of his articles that there was a war in Iraq, and are they claiming that that "claim" is false? Or is that not an "allegation?" That statement is nonsense. It's an empty P.R. statement."

Speaking of empty statements, what was TNR statement backing his lies up, then?

---
PP:
"What? The Army investigated itself and found nothing wrong? And the military flack whose job it is to go out and tell reporters there's nothing wrong went out and told reporters there's nothing wrong?"

What TNR editors investigated their author [and husband of staff member] and found nothing wrong???

Fake, But Accurate
 

None of this is "fake but accurate," as you said. Which is a nice little recapitulation of the whole episode. Just so long as you can trash the other side, you don't care how you get there.

But thank you for acknowledging, however grudgingly, the weak probative value of the anonymous leak about the Army's putative investigation.

eta: This post by Ezra Klein is dead-on:

• A BIT MORE ON BEAUCHAMP. As I understand the story right now, TNR appears to have verified the overwhelming bulk of his story, while the military says they can't verify it. Given that the incentives for both institutions are to prove exactly what they've proven, I'm not precisely sure who to believe. There are also rumors of a recantation out there, but no such document has actually been obtained, and you'd think that it would be released in some formal manner, rather than leaked to the Weekly Standard's blogger (I do love Brian's title though: "The Weekly Standard Tries Its Hand at Reporting.).
  
  If Beauchamp is indeed a liar, I'll be surprised, but nor particularly concerned. There are, in fact, liars out there. And there are also cruelties in Iraq. The response of the Left on Beauchamp is entirely -- and maybe embarrassingly -- a counter-reaction to the obvious bad faith of his critics.
  
  The Weekly Standard in particular, and war supporters in general, have never struck me as particularly concerned with factual accuracy. The energy the Right has expended on disproving Beauchamp's claims has dwarfed the energy they expended tracking down the hollowness of the lies that took us to war. The anger they've expressed over his misremembering which base he was at when he mocked a disfigured woman is considerable, whereas the anger they expressed when Bush misrepresented our fight in Iraq as primarily against a branch of al Qaeda has been entirely absent. They were willing to destroy this guy, expose his personal life, dig through his poetry, anything to discredit his story. But when the lies were pro-war, they've been exactly as dogged -- see the embarrassing ouvre of Stephen Hayes -- in protecting the falsehoods.
  
  What we have here, at the end of the day, is not an appetite for accuracy or a concern for the truth, but a cynically motivated feeding frenzy meant to discredit an upsetting op-ed. If Beauchamp is a liar -- and I'm not convinced he is -- he should be drummed out of the publishing world. But this selective outrage over untruths and merely occasional thirst for accuracy is quite scary. We're currently embroiled in a war where the lies have killed thousands and thousands of people. But the only falsehoods the Right appears to be concerned about are the personal anecdotes of a young soldier.

I don't really care about Beauchamp, and still haven't read what he wrote. But the reaction of the right-wing nutjobs to his piece is odious.

Fake, But Accurate
 

sunbeltjerrys rejoinder to Ezra in the comments was spot on:

Clearly, you do

then perhaps you should, or otherwise you really should stop defending the lying fuck.

No, what is odious is you defending an article you've never read, "written" by some self-admitted mean-spirited thug, to describe the horror of war he had not ever witnessed, whose only qualification was that he is fucking a senior person at TNR.

Fake, But Accurate
 

His qualification is that -- unlike you and most of the people in a lather attacking him -- he is serving his country by serving in combat in Iraq.

That said, I'm not defending what he wrote. I'm attacking you and a wide variety of right-wing nutjobs.

Fake, But Accurate
 

He purportedly [I saw purportedly because no one has even verified this, save, according to TNR, "one" other source] wrote about something he did prior to ever stepping foot in Iraq.

So basically if I buy a ticket to Iraq for some point in the future, it gives me carte blanche to publish false stories about the military today?

PS - many of the people attacking him are milbloggers, writing from the ground over there - so let's be honest here, shall we?