Posts
Or, Why the Conservative Thing to Do Would Be to Leave Iraq Instantly
The exact figures are a little hard to confirm, but it certainly looks like the number of US troops killed from the initial invasion of Iraq through Saddam’s toppling was only a few hundred. Even counting all the deaths back home on 9/11 itself, the combined total is still less than we have lost since the occupation/pacification of Iraq started dragging into infinity.
The comparison between our pre and post occupation losses is even more pronounced if we count all casualties including mental problems, not just the deaths. Once we start looking at dollar figure drains on our treasury and economy from just conquering versus sticking around for “peace keeping” and “nation building,” the adverse cost comparison becoming truly staggering.
What that suggests is we should pull out immediately and say we will be back if they ever try anything again we don’t like such as looking at us cross-eyed. (After all, since they didn’t really have anything to do with 9/11 or have the nukes we thought, it must have been the Saddam’s sneer that justified invading).
It certainly calls into question the thinking of those who insist we must stay to keep them from attacking us later. Haven’t any of those geniuses who got us into this mess and want to keep us there ever heard of that quaint concept called cost/benefit analysis?
[more irreverence at resistence-is-possible.blogspot.com]
2007/06/06
“BUSH’S BUNGLING BARRISTERS”
Or, Why Do the Republicans Only Procure Problematic Prosecutors?
If anyone in the Republican Party had the common sense of an elephant, they’d promptly fire whoever is in charge of recruiting Republican prosecutors. Think about it. Is the entire GOP utterly incapable of finding even one truly competent lawyer within its ranks?
Look at the disaster of Special Prosecutor Ken Starr - millions of dollars and hundreds of staff utterly wasted for years chasing Clinton. It is hard to believe nothing could be uncovered in any of thousands of White Water transactions scrutinized.
Look at the White House counsel selections, Alberto Gonzales and Harriet Myers. They earn the title of Dumb and Dumber. Or perhaps Torquemada and Toots.
Look the circus created by the entire upper echelons of what probably should be renamed the InJustice Department. Monica Gooding for instance came from a law school of the quality that advertises on matchbooks, a place where you “learn” more about the rulings of Jehovah than the rulings of Judge Learned Hand. Out of the tens of thousands of lawyers annually applying for government legal jobs, surely they could have done better than Ms. Out-of-her-League Gooding.
Was she there primarily to make the newest boss, Alberto Gonzales, appear well qualified in contrast? If so, that failed too. The Gonz has proven to be so incompetent himself, he should be referred to as the “Attorney Corporal,” certainly in comparison to John Ashcroft, the prior Republican Attorney General. Of course, that particular boob’s own stature was no great shakes on the universal scale either (as illustrated by his insistence on covering the statute of Justice so that a bare bosom would not show). Remember, Ashcroft only got the top legal beagle job offer in the first place because he was available due to him being so bad at politics he lost his bid for a congressional seat to a dead man.
The dry rot penetrates all levels. As hard as it is to believe, the Keystone Koppers selected by the present Administration to showcase its machoness by bringing captured alleged terrorists to justice are even worse. In the trial of Jose Padilla for example, a self proclaimed and loudly so terrorist, they couldn’t get the death penalty even though the defendant had openly confessed to all the crimes. In fact, due to the federal prosecutor’s committing serious ethical violations during the trial while prepping its witnesses, they came damned close to having all charges dismissed by the judge. Incompetence, they name is Republican prosecutor. The nincompoop prosecuting that case made even “Heckofa job” Brownie appear talented in comparison. It makes you wonder if the Republican prosecutors can be trusted to tie their own shoe laces without an instruction manual written in words of one syllable.
Not a week seems to go by without a fresh revelation of misfeasance, malfeasance or nonfeasance by Republican hired prosecutors. Could they have “passed” their bar exams the same way Bush was “voted” into office in Florida or Ohio? Perhaps Diebold has the concession on electronic grading of bar exams.
The latest fiasco involves the boneheaded prosecutors at Gitmo who managed not only to get three terrorist trials kicked for lack of jurisdiction, the results threaten the entire system of prosecuting those detainees. If you were Al Queda, you’d never want the Republicans to lose power. Despite stripping the Constitution to arm themselves with vast new investigatory and prosecutory weapons that would have delighted Stalin, Republican selected prosecutors still seem to end up shooting themselves in the foot. So much for the idea that it is the Republicans who will protect us from criminals.
Why have the Republicans been so uniformly ineffective in finding and hiring competent attorneys who happen to be Republican? Obviously, there must be many gifted as well as honorable attorneys who register as Republican. Perhaps it is because the “deciders” on who gets the jobs fiercely value loyalty to the Republican platform over expertise, experience, ethics, business sense or even common sense. Actually, it is personal loyalty to Bush that is even more important than loyalty to traditional GOP principles since, after all, Bush seems to ignore much of what the Republicans once stood for. Either way, loyalty is definitely deemed more sought after in candidates than such trivialities as upholding and defending the Constitution as called for in the sworn oath of office of federal prosecutors. Either way, truth, fairness, impartiality and justice for all, once the defining objectives for our justice system get short shrift when Republicans are picking those who prosecute.
One only has to look at the recent firings of the eight regional Attorney Generals. There are only 91 AGs altogether. Canning eight represented almost a tenth of the total. Most astonishing of all is that they were all Republicans and fired not for incompetence (which would be a good reason), but for not being enough of a salivating Bush Savant.
The apparent goal, overtly professed, was to convert the entire Justice department and all its bureaucrats into an arm of the Republican party dedicated toward one goal, achieving a permanent Republican dictatorship. They apparently did not feel they could achieve their goal by mere persuasion or the power of their ideas. They resorted instead to just grabbing power. However, since not everyone who grew up loving our country believes the system should be corrupted for that purpose, not even all Republican zealots, perhaps that explains why only underachievers achieved prosecutor appointments when Republicans are appointing.
In one sense, we probably should be thankful. If the Republicans had selected competent lawyers, their heavy handed attempt to convert our democracy to a permanent Republican controlled dictatorship might have succeeded. Let us hope they don’t find someone better at locate competent Republican prosecutors. That way, the next Administration will get to spend a lot of time prosecuting Republicans.
If anyone in the Republican Party had the common sense of an elephant, they’d promptly fire whoever is in charge of recruiting Republican prosecutors. Think about it. Is the entire GOP utterly incapable of finding even one truly competent lawyer within its ranks?
Look at the disaster of Special Prosecutor Ken Starr - millions of dollars and hundreds of staff utterly wasted for years chasing Clinton. It is hard to believe nothing could be uncovered in any of thousands of White Water transactions scrutinized.
Look at the White House counsel selections, Alberto Gonzales and Harriet Myers. They earn the title of Dumb and Dumber. Or perhaps Torquemada and Toots.
Look the circus created by the entire upper echelons of what probably should be renamed the InJustice Department. Monica Gooding for instance came from a law school of the quality that advertises on matchbooks, a place where you “learn” more about the rulings of Jehovah than the rulings of Judge Learned Hand. Out of the tens of thousands of lawyers annually applying for government legal jobs, surely they could have done better than Ms. Out-of-her-League Gooding.
Was she there primarily to make the newest boss, Alberto Gonzales, appear well qualified in contrast? If so, that failed too. The Gonz has proven to be so incompetent himself, he should be referred to as the “Attorney Corporal,” certainly in comparison to John Ashcroft, the prior Republican Attorney General. Of course, that particular boob’s own stature was no great shakes on the universal scale either (as illustrated by his insistence on covering the statute of Justice so that a bare bosom would not show). Remember, Ashcroft only got the top legal beagle job offer in the first place because he was available due to him being so bad at politics he lost his bid for a congressional seat to a dead man.
The dry rot penetrates all levels. As hard as it is to believe, the Keystone Koppers selected by the present Administration to showcase its machoness by bringing captured alleged terrorists to justice are even worse. In the trial of Jose Padilla for example, a self proclaimed and loudly so terrorist, they couldn’t get the death penalty even though the defendant had openly confessed to all the crimes. In fact, due to the federal prosecutor’s committing serious ethical violations during the trial while prepping its witnesses, they came damned close to having all charges dismissed by the judge. Incompetence, they name is Republican prosecutor. The nincompoop prosecuting that case made even “Heckofa job” Brownie appear talented in comparison. It makes you wonder if the Republican prosecutors can be trusted to tie their own shoe laces without an instruction manual written in words of one syllable.
Not a week seems to go by without a fresh revelation of misfeasance, malfeasance or nonfeasance by Republican hired prosecutors. Could they have “passed” their bar exams the same way Bush was “voted” into office in Florida or Ohio? Perhaps Diebold has the concession on electronic grading of bar exams.
The latest fiasco involves the boneheaded prosecutors at Gitmo who managed not only to get three terrorist trials kicked for lack of jurisdiction, the results threaten the entire system of prosecuting those detainees. If you were Al Queda, you’d never want the Republicans to lose power. Despite stripping the Constitution to arm themselves with vast new investigatory and prosecutory weapons that would have delighted Stalin, Republican selected prosecutors still seem to end up shooting themselves in the foot. So much for the idea that it is the Republicans who will protect us from criminals.
Why have the Republicans been so uniformly ineffective in finding and hiring competent attorneys who happen to be Republican? Obviously, there must be many gifted as well as honorable attorneys who register as Republican. Perhaps it is because the “deciders” on who gets the jobs fiercely value loyalty to the Republican platform over expertise, experience, ethics, business sense or even common sense. Actually, it is personal loyalty to Bush that is even more important than loyalty to traditional GOP principles since, after all, Bush seems to ignore much of what the Republicans once stood for. Either way, loyalty is definitely deemed more sought after in candidates than such trivialities as upholding and defending the Constitution as called for in the sworn oath of office of federal prosecutors. Either way, truth, fairness, impartiality and justice for all, once the defining objectives for our justice system get short shrift when Republicans are picking those who prosecute.
One only has to look at the recent firings of the eight regional Attorney Generals. There are only 91 AGs altogether. Canning eight represented almost a tenth of the total. Most astonishing of all is that they were all Republicans and fired not for incompetence (which would be a good reason), but for not being enough of a salivating Bush Savant.
The apparent goal, overtly professed, was to convert the entire Justice department and all its bureaucrats into an arm of the Republican party dedicated toward one goal, achieving a permanent Republican dictatorship. They apparently did not feel they could achieve their goal by mere persuasion or the power of their ideas. They resorted instead to just grabbing power. However, since not everyone who grew up loving our country believes the system should be corrupted for that purpose, not even all Republican zealots, perhaps that explains why only underachievers achieved prosecutor appointments when Republicans are appointing.
In one sense, we probably should be thankful. If the Republicans had selected competent lawyers, their heavy handed attempt to convert our democracy to a permanent Republican controlled dictatorship might have succeeded. Let us hope they don’t find someone better at locate competent Republican prosecutors. That way, the next Administration will get to spend a lot of time prosecuting Republicans.
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