PMC Commentary

The boys at the yacht club are laughing

When I read about dis-organized labor’s feud that has now erupted into full-blown gang warfare my first thought - a symptom of desperate escapism, I suppose - was, where is Constantine the Great when you need him?

In 325 A.D., immersed in a doctrinal controversy that threatened to tear apart the church and, of more intense concern to the emperor, the state, Constantine called an urgent staff meeting of high-level operatives to say he wished them to negotiate some workable agreement. Given that Constantine was the kind of CEO capable of permanently relieving even family members from worldly existence, his wishes tended to carry some weight.

Before the meeting he put his displeasure in a memo. To the principal troublemakers he wrote, “This contention has not arisen respecting any important command of the law, nor has any new opinion been introduced…. It is thought to be not only indecorous, but altogether unlawful, that so numerous a people of God should be governed and directed at your pleasure, while you are thus [jealously] contending with each other, and quarrelling about small and very trifling matters.” Here was perspective at work.

In the end there were gracious concessions, an accord prevailed and the crisis passed, even though honest debate continued. But above all there was peace. There was agreement to hang together rather than fall apart - a divided house can’t stand and all that. Sensible men had followed the advice proffered by the wise, from Constantine to Lyndon Johnson: “Come let us reason together.”

It is therefore sad that mere labor leaders - those with less than the world’s future in their hands and less to work with every passing day - have been unable to do the same.

The recent defections from the AFL-CIO show what the absence of leadership and presence of inflexibility can do. What should be manageable bickering escalates into major bickering. Internal squabbling then overshadows the external and actual threat - in this case the efficiently organized right, intent on a union-less society wherein dog-eat-dog anarchy reigns at the bottom and a disciplined plutocracy laughs from atop. And make no mistake: that is precisely what it’s doing right now.

In addressing the divided AFL-CIO convention delegates, Jesse Jackson speechified on the incredibly obvious. “We must turn to each other, not on each other.” The alternative accomplished by selfish insurgents and uncreative incumbents leaves “so much blood on the field that you cannot compete” against “anti-civil-rights, anti-labor-rights Republicans.”

Those unionists close - perhaps too close - to this battle will dutifully list their complaints for anyone willing to listen, protesting that lack of satisfaction justified the break. Great care is given by each side in highlighting its propriety on all counts.

But here’s the thing, dear union leaders. Those of us on the outside who still see unionization as one of the few, last hopes for averting permanent plutocracy don’t really give a damn what your complaints are and don’t care that your internal opponents upset you. We do, however, very much care about the bigger picture and deserved your attention to it as a fundamental matter of solidarity.

And you blew it. As a result every dollar of union dues from this day forward is devalued; organizing is yet further harmed; progressive politicians must now compete for competing endorsements; critical get-out-the-vote efforts are less coordinated; and the vulturine right will now pick at the bones of your weakened membership.

Thanks a lot, guys. I’m sure you had good reasons - and the reactionary right is cheering each and every one.

Seventeen centuries ago Emperor Constantine described his frustration with internal disputes fomented by shortsighted factions: “They bring me more grief than anything else.” He overcame them - but then again, he wasn’t dealing with today’s labor leaders.

Bush resigns, admits Kerry was right

Yesterday I mourned the loss of the Bush administration’s “war on terror” slogan and the appearance of its less than inspiring replacement, “a global struggle against violent extremism.” For an administration that prides itself on horribly misleading catchphrases - “death taxes,” “Healthy Forests,” “Clear Skies,” “Saving Social Security” - its Luntzian wordmeisters have let us down.

Of course the new, more complex slogan is intended to distract from Bush’s utter failure to make strides in “winning the war on terrorism” as promised - indeed, to distract from his contributions to terrorism’s growth - and to introduce as well the novel idea that perhaps this problem is bigger than p.r. glitz and raw firepower can conquer. As reported, “The shifting language is one of the most public changes in the administration’s strategy to battle Al Qaeda and its affiliates, and it tracks closely with Mr. Bush’s recent speeches emphasizing freedom, democracy and the worldwide clash of ideas.”

Oddly enough, the new slogan - the “shifting language” - also tracks what liberals have advocated all along.

Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers said this week that he had “objected to the use of the term ‘war on terrorism’ before, because if you call it a war, then you think of people in uniform as being the solution.” By “before,” Myers meant prior to Bush’s reelection, which critically hung on rousing, flag-waving talk of uniformed force crushing the enemy single-handedly.

It’s been all military up till now, which liberals have repeatedly criticized - for which they’ve been repeatedly ridiculed by the right. Most famously Karl Rove reminded us of how thrillingly gladiatorial it all is, and by inference always should be, when he talked of conservatives having “prepared for war” and been anxious to “unleash the might and power” of the military while liberal weenies, side by side with the attackers, moaned on an analyst’s couch.

Now that Bush is a safe distance from reelection, however, it is Gen. Myers who’s unleashed to confess the problem’s solution is “more diplomatic, more economic, more political than it is military.”

That could have come right off the pages of John Kerry’s campaign talking points. In fact, it did.

As early as late 2003 Kerry said as president he would launch “a major initiative in public diplomacy” to lead “the next generation of Islamic youth” toward democracy, work to overcome anti-American sentiment in the Middle East, block financial resources for terrorists and rebuild international alliances.

To this wide-ranging proposal that it now parrots, the Bush administration then responded that Kerry was "misguided [and] hypocritical.”

It’s more than just Myers touting the Kerry line. The Bush choir is in full harmony with, for example, national security adviser Steven Hadley saying “It is more than just a military war on terror - it’s broader than that”; and under secretary of defense Douglas Feith crooning that if our strategy is restricted to “attacking and disrupting terrorist networks, you’re on a treadmill that is likely to get faster and faster with time.” To “ultimately” win, he says, we must examine “the ideological part of the war that deals with how the terrorists recruit and indoctrinate new terrorists.”

Here’s a tip, Doug. Foreign occupations tend to spur recruitment and facilitate indoctrination.

So to make any progress they’re finally coming around to others’ point of view, just like they had to do on North Korea - but only after the harm had been done. On that front Bush’s negotiator “sent several signals that the United States would take a more flexible, possibly softer negotiating line” regarding the crisis, now that the North Koreans have had time to quadruple their nuclear inventory.

I asked yesterday if the administration’s more enlightened language on terrorism might reflect “a fresh strategy of some benefit.” But it’s too little too late and the lasting harm has already been done. And once political pressures here and abroad drive us out of Iraq - as they inevitably will - its Shiite-dominated government will likely get on with a Sunni-slaughtering rampage that’ll cause the world to stir with nostalgia for Saddam Hussein.

But by then George will have kicked back in monied retirement and left the whole damned mess in someone else’s lap - probably a Democrat, who will then be crucified for the inherited mess by the clowns who created it.

When good sloganeering goes bad

Q. How can you tell when the Bushies are getting worried?

A. They start changing slogans.

During the 2000 campaign, for instance, before they realized that a handful of juridical hypocrites could do away with all that messy democracy business and simply appoint a president, they switched slogans at the drop of every threatening hat.

You’ll recall that Bush started with the always-amusing “compassionate conservatism,” a choice alliteration that actually advertised his intent on mean-spirited radicalism to the Orwellianly aware. (Think “The softer side of Sears.”) And he opted for “Prosperity with a Purpose” when folks began asking why they should trade eight years of Clinton-Gore’s job growth and relative international tranquility for a befuddled business failure who was lucky to find North America on a map.

When things started looking bad after his New Hampshire primary loss to reformer John McCain, Bush’s handlers then decided he was more a “Reformer with Results” than a purposefully prosperous guy. Then, knowing he looked like an utterly empty shell on the stump, Bush fired off reassurances that he possessed “Real Plans for Real People” - as opposed to the taxidermic ones, I guess.

Following that he mixed it up with “Real Purposes for Real People” (those would be really prosperous purposes, or really purposeful prosperity) and “Real Tax Relief for Real People,” culminating in “Real Savings for Real People.” (I’m not making this up. Really.) Finally, given his campaign’s divisiveness, he announced he was a “Uniter, not a divider.”

As silly as all this follow-the-bouncing-ball sloganeering was, it seems to have worked by and large. Only lately have the president’s approval numbers begun to slip, and only because he’s making life a living hell for working-class Americans and generally botching everything overseas. That’s fickle public opinion for you.

Also hurting his numbers is that “war on terror” thing that W. has been winning for some time now, though victory is beginning to look a lot like Germany did to France in 1940.

So what to do in these uncertain times of danger? You got it. Change slogans.

“The Bush administration is retooling its slogan for the fight against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, pushing the idea that the long-term struggle is as much an ideological battle as a military mission, senior administration and military officials said Monday,” reported the New York Times Tuesday. Hence the “war on terror” is so yesterday.

But here’s the disappointment. The old war on terror, as floated recently in speeches by Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers, is now - brace your bad self - “a global struggle against violent extremism.”

Is that really the best they can do? It’s wordy, lacks that old-time alliteration and is dreadfully umph-less. It’s also a clear sign that Ms. Hughes is desperately needed in her new propaganda job over at State. She was always Karen-on-the-spot with something pithy (that’s pithy) whenever George got in trouble before - and just look at what happens when she’s gone: “A global struggle against violent extremism.”

They could have at least tossed out something with some historical zing to it, something like “Tippecanoe and Terrorism too,” or “Whip zarqaWi Now,” or “Don’t Mess with Messopotamia.” But “a global struggle against violent extremism”? Surely they can do better than that, and I’m sure Karen will.

Does this watered-down slogan reflect a fundamental change in Bush’s course, a reevaluation of his thinking, a fresh strategy of some benefit? I doubt it. When it comes to terrorists, at heart Bush truly is a uniter, not a divider.

Of greater concern to those of us who love Generalissimo Bush is that this uncharacteristically sloppy sloganeering suggests a man who no longer cares as much - a man comfortable with reelection’s security, a man willing to slacken his grinding workload and be content with leisurely bike rides and such.

I hope not. The country needs - now more than ever - a compassionately conservative reformer willing to juggle this global struggle against violent extremism with the pursuit of prosperity with a purpose while securing results in regards to real plans for real people. Or something catchy like that.

Bush Incorporated: A case study in irrational exuberance

Republicans used to argue that government should be run more like a business. Well, they got their wish in Bush Inc., a bunch of middle-aged white guys intent on strutting their years of private-sector experience both here and abroad. Problem is, the Bushies haven’t demonstrated an ounce of business smarts, either here or abroad - and especially abroad.

In fact, we’re the New Coke of world power. In executing a business plan of textbook witlessness, Bush Inc. rushed the product of Imperialism-Lite onto the Iraqi market with no thought as to its inherent potential or long-term cost, no marketing research to speak of, a mere assumption of consumers wanting to lap it up, and, of particularly lethal repercussions, no concept of how the competition might respond.

But the competition had its own business plan.

“They just keep getting stronger,” reported the New York Times last Sunday of Bush Inc.’s quite astute adversaries, who as far I know employ no Harvard Business School MBAs. “Despite months of assurances that their forces were on the wane, the guerrillas and terrorists battling the American-backed enterprise [in Iraq] appear to be growing more violent, more resilient and more sophisticated than ever.”

While CEO George W. Bush was prattling on about “staying the course,” which meant doing the same unproductive thing over and over, the competition regrouped at opportunistic moments and initiated new business strategies to actually create more favorable market conditions for itself.

“After concentrating their efforts for two and a half years on driving out the 138,000-plus American troops, the insurgents appear to be shifting their focus to the political and sectarian polarization of the country - apparently hoping to ignite a civil war - and to the isolation of the Iraqi government abroad,” continued the Times’s report, which could have, perhaps should have, appeared not in the international section, but the business section.

You want to stay the course? asked the competition. Fine, it answered. Stay all you want. We’ll adjust. And adjustment meant employee recruitment, investment in management training, a sharpening of distribution techniques, and a concentration on worker motivation and short-term productivity.

“We are capturing or killing a lot of insurgents,” said a senior executive of Army Ltd., a Bush Inc. subsidiary. “But they’re being replaced quicker than we can interdict their operations. There is always another insurgent ready to step up and take charge.”

The competition also understands efficient means of disrupting Bush Inc.’s attempt at horizontal integration. “The violence could overwhelm the intensive American-backed efforts now under way to draw Iraq’s Sunni Arabs into the political mainstream, leaving the community more embittered than ever and setting the stage for even more violence and possibly civil war.” Divide and conquer - a fundamental principle well learned.

The competition understands as well the proper division of labor and the best timing for spinning off subsidiaries. “American commanders believe that the rash of diplomat kidnappings came after the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi formed a cell in Baghdad specifically for abducting diplomats.”

And, of course, there’s the importance of a good publicity department in attracting human capital and knowing how to piece together a good, honest prospectus. “One other recent development in the insurgency - and a possible explanation of its ability to bring in recruits from around the Arab world - is the reach and sophistication of its public relations. Most of the main insurgent groups … regularly post updates of their exploits on the Web.”

I’ve never taken a business course, but even I can see that the competition can’t take all the credit. There are external variables in play that not every upstart enterprise can bank on, such as its adversary’s world-class ineptitude. This venture has turned out like all the ventures that CEO Bush was ever involved in - a complete and unmitigated failure. Before, there was always someone higher up to bail him out. This time he was on top; his failure had no place to go but down.

A complete listing of Bush Inc.’s miscalculations is beyond both my ken and patience. In a nutshell of cinematic metaphor, though, it’s enough to say this gang came out of the world’s executive washroom with nothing but phallic ideology in its hand. Successful Yankee know-how has always been about pragmatic means in achieving pragmatic goals. The Bushies, however, substituted an ideological whirlwind of muscle-flexing and masculine bravado.

Despite all the disappointments, there is one thing that Bush Inc. can be thankful for. Shareholders don’t normally tolerate incompetent executives simply staying the course and hoping for the best.

Principled bunk

In seeking admission to the Federalist Society it may help if you’re a brilliant licensed attorney; otherwise its exclusive membership is restricted “to anyone who wishes to join.” So you just might be able to wrangle a membership card if you’d like to increase the odds of one day saying to your spouse: “Sorry, hon, gotta run. I’m meeting John Roberts at the club.” (The press has repeatedly, mistakenly cited the judge as a member). And there is yet one other loophole you can take advantage of in skirting its rigorous membership qualifications and hobnobbing with legal greats. From its Web site: “Q. Who can attend Federalist Society meetings? A. Everyone.”

As you can see, I’ve been wandering around the Federalist Society’s cyber-HQ, mainly because the organization has been in the news so much lately. The trip was worth it. While learning more about the Society -- “a group of conservatives and libertarians dedicated to reforming the current legal order” -- I was also reminded of how good the right is at framing the opposition, framing itself, and, in the process, seducing honest but lay onlookers.

A few passages from the site’s “About Us” section illustrate. It begins with a forewarning of an omnipotent liberalism up to no good.

Law schools and the legal profession are currently strongly dominated by a form of orthodox liberal ideology which advocates a centralized and uniform society.

I’m not sure what that means, but it sure sounds menacing. The writer probably meant “centralized state,” since a “centralized society” implies little more than a physical concentration of people. But the use of “centralized” is to the right what “ontological” is to academics: an impressive term one can throw into any sentence without the burden of relevance. It’s nifty and sounds smart. As for what a “uniform society” means? Got me, especially since the right dwells on blaming the left for promoting “multiculturalism.”

Moving right along.

We are committed to the principles that the state exists to preserve freedom, that the separation of governmental powers is central to our Constitution, and that it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be.

There you go, the real and misleading nut of it all.

I suppose I belong to what the Federalist Society disparages as the school of “orthodox liberal ideology,” yet I, and every orthodox liberal ideologue I know, would happily concur with the principle that the state exists to preserve freedom. I won’t enter the philosophical debate of negative versus positive freedom that can drag both left and right into Byzantine obscurity. Let it suffice that most people understand and embrace the general concept of freedom, or liberty, and liberals are as committed to it as anyone on the right -- even more so at times, especially when it comes to restricting “centralized” state powers that might limit freedom (see Patriot Act). But the Society’s propagandistic point sticks to those who don’t pause: Liberals’ close relation is the Big Brother of oppression who wants to strip you of your freedom -- and the right says “Nay.”

Back to its core principles, the second of which is that the separation of governmental powers is central to our Constitution. Again, that view holds from the left, but, also again, even more so these days. Has it not been the right assaulting the principle of powers-separation? Haven’t we suffered constitutional revisionism only from right-wing loonies like Tom DeLay, not Ted Kennedy? What have I missed?

And here’s a choice item. Last Friday on Hardball, conservative-libertarian, presidential hopeful and Federalist Society-honored speaker Senator George Allen said that what America needs are judges who will interpret, not invent, the law; and in nearly the same breath said judges should focus on upholding “the will of the people” -- in reference, of course, to socially conservative issues. Ponder that demagogic contradiction for a while.

Which elucidates the Society’s real commitment to its third principle -- that it is the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be. Senator Allen already has shown us the way. True law is what the Federalist Society and right-wing politicians say it is. The fact that true law happens to square with their political philosophy is pure coincidence.

It’s a pity. I had hoped to find at least some semblance of ideological honesty and consistency on the Web site of such a regularly touted institution of “principles.” I found neither, and the omissions were in bold. Just shallowness and hypocrisy, the hallmarks of modern “conservative-libertarian” values.

The Federalist Society’s site does, however, stealthily accomplish its political objective -- that of hoodwinking the American electorate. It extols a supposedly beleaguered belief in “individual liberty, traditional values, and the rule of law,” and paints liberals as those lying in oppositional hostility to them.

That is bunk, and bunk is indeed something that liberals do oppose.

A wasted diversion

From a political standpoint the president would have been better off had he nominated to the Court the strictest of fire-eating “originalists” -- perhaps someone anxious that our founding fathers’ intentions be re-enshrined by census-adjusting for the two-fifths-inflated African-American population, or denouncing Congress’ amended power to levy an income tax as the Bolshevist coup it was. You know, someone who genuinely reflects modern Republican thinking.

As it is, things are much too amicable. John G. Roberts just isn’t the kind of guy even most lefties can get steamed up about, principally because there’s little in his background that indicates anything other than a pinstriped Boy Scout who escorts little old ladies to tea-sipping Federalist Society meetings.

So Bush will get his man on the court, but his less than strife-ridden choice leaves plenty of front-page room on which headline writers can splash the drip, drip, drip of Rovegate, such as yesterday’s “Plame's Identity Marked As Secret” (Washington Post).

Roberts is the distraction who wasn’t, which permits mental images of a special prosecuting Patrick “Michael” Fitzgerald to flourish with undistracted glee. “You have to answer for Valerie, Karlo. Only don't tell me you're innocent, because it insults my intelligence and makes me very, very angry. Now who was it? Barzini or Fleischer?”

Whack.

Meanwhile other White House mobsters who joined Bush on that now-infamous trip to Africa on which the now-infamous classified State Department memo was toted along are either lawyering up, or taking it on the lam. Senior Advisor Dan Bartlett was one -- his attorney “has refused to discuss the case”; while former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was another and “could not be reached for comment” -- yesterday, today, or next year.

It’s understandable that these boys would be ducking press scrutiny since the fresh news leaks aren’t exactly mirroring Republican talking points. The facts of the memo in question are a far cry from what Roveian apologists have been spewing for weeks.

“Any Bush administration official who read [the memo] should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials,” reported the Washington Post. “The paragraph identifying [Plame] as the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was clearly marked to show that it contained classified material at the ‘secret’ level, two sources said. The CIA classifies as ‘secret’ the names of officers whose identities are covert.”

You’ll recall that GOP swat teams once fanned out to spread the fantasy that Valerie Plame was no spook, no covert anything, no person of any vital importance except to hubby for his meal tickets. The new line is now Rove’s old one: That the deputy chief of staff, a man loathe to engage in wicked goings on, knew nothing of the memo’s significance until “people in the special prosecutor’s office” handed it to him.

Other Republican talking points are just as unbelievably silly; for example Rove was only trying to spare Time magazine embarrassment by wrongly reporting on the Ambassador Wilson story. As Mark Shields mocked: “This is a side of the man we have not seen before -- selflessly saving gullible newsmen from publishing anything inaccurate.”

One marvels at such party-line piffle until recalling what made the GOP so successful: the Big Lie, no matter how silly, hammered over and over till folks think it’s an old truism. That chestnut of a strategy is weakening, however, in the face of so many rapidly gathering cold facts.

So to get Karl off the front page and somebody else on, new heights of political audacity are called for. For instance Bush could summarily drop John Roberts’ nomination, explaining that John is too well to represent the party’s interests on the Supreme Court. Then he could nominate, say, Robert Novak. He seems to know the law pretty well.

The chicken or the egg of jackassdom

What struck me most about the president’s Tuesday-night introduction of John G. Roberts was his emphasis on the nominee’s purported qualities of “wisdom, fairness and civility.” It seemed clear that given the multiple problems Mr. Bush is experiencing as a result of possessing none of these qualities himself, the president hopes to improve his image by at least associating with them.

There’s a huge problem with that tactic, though. Roberts is the great judicial White Hope only because he has practically no paper trail. He may, or may not, be wise, fair and civil in future deliberations. But there’s no hope for Bush. He has a paper trail of human wreckage that’s easy to read and no amount of association with another’s wisdom, fairness and civility can overcome the staggering fact of his absolute poverty of these qualities.

For instance -- and this is merely the biggest for instance -- on the day he nominated Judge Roberts the Oxford Research Group and IraqBodyCount.org released their latest cooperative findings in “A Dossier on Civilian Casualties in Iraq, 2003-2005.” Its details horrifyingly confirm what every informed, levelheaded student of the Middle East predicted well before Bush Inc. blundered ahead with military intervention. Virtually every aspect of the report screams an utter absence of presidential wisdom, not to mention his rude unfairness and incivility toward an innocent population.

I’m sure the report’s statistical breakdown will be scanned in a removed, clinical way by the icy “metrics” crowd of Don Rumsfeld’s world, and fittingly, the breakdown is indeed chilling.

For example in the two years since Bush decided to remake Iraq into a garden of democratic tranquility not possible under Saddam Hussein’s violence, 24,865 civilians have been killed, according to the report. Approximately 5,000 were women and children.

But as casualties of war, right? Well, no, not all, not even most. In fact, 70 percent of these civilians were killed after POTUS declared “Mission accomplished” in May 2003. The bereaved should be pleased to learn, however, that roughly 6,900 more civilian deaths have come from their liberators’ firepower rather than from that of anti-occupation forces. Over half of all deaths resulted from “explosive devices” and 64 percent of that half from air power, including lovely cluster bombs.

But these are only numbers on paper. As such they lack the heart-wrenching impact of eye-witness portraits of the bloodshed and mayhem occurring in Iraq on a daily basis. It was therefore welcome that the freshly released “Dossier on Civilian Casualties” included some of these portraits in print, gathered by a variety of on-the-ground journalists.

Here’s a sampling of the exquisite fairness and civility suffered by innocents of that country, courtesy one wise GWB:

“Nearly 100 villagers were killed by US bombing and strafing on April 5, including 43 in one house, for reasons that they do not understand. ‘There was no military base here,’ says [one resident]. ‘We are not military personnel. This is just a peasant village.’” (Christian Science Monitor, May 22, 2003)

“The victims, including seven children, were crushed when the back room of the house became a pile of cement rubble. [A man] said he lost his wife, a daughter, a son and seven grandchildren. He dug out three other family members with his bare hands, he recalled today, after hearing cries of ‘Baba! Baba!’ -- ‘Father! Father!’ -- from under the collapsed brick.” (Washington Post, April 9, 2003)

And finally, a hospital physician in the Iraqi town of Nasiriyah recited to the (London) Times some of what he witnessed within a mere three days: “The boy of 11 with a tiny chest wound who took an hour to die; the mother who arrived at his hospital trying to push her three-year-old daughter’s liver back into the child’s ripped abdomen; the middle-aged man who lost his right leg during the war against Iran, and whose left leg was amputated after his home was attacked by a US Cobra helicopter.” (April 14, 2003)

Wisdom, fairness and civility. It’s like an old “Karnak” routine. Name three things you might find in a Supreme Court Justice, won’t find in Iraq and can’t find in George W. Bush.

Yet when pondering the Iraq mess and how we came to neoconservatively create it, let’s remember one mitigating truth. Bush isn’t a jackass because he’s a right-wing neocon. He’s a right-wing neocon because he’s a jackass.

Straight-talkin’ POTUS

Suddenly we find pundits huddling over the troublesome proposition that George W. Bush is beginning to look a bit shifty. Because of his recent redefinition of what it takes to fire a duplicitous, security-breaching aide, the possibility now looms, warns this insightful crowd, that Bush may not, after all, be the straight-talkin’ Texan who lays it on the line -- no fudging, no parsing, no changing political lanes for expediency’s sake.

Pardon me, but where have the folks at Pundit Central been for the last five years?

Have White House watchers really forgotten how Bush shifted his 2001 rationale for massive tax cuts? First he said they were needed because the economy was doing so well, and then they were needed because, well, it wasn’t. Now there’s some straight-talkin’ for ya.

Have they forgotten the lane changing from campaign trail to Oval Office on environmental policy? On tariffs? On nation building? On education spending? And the careful parsing involved in all of it?

And how could the pundits have forgotten that Bush opposed a department of homeland security and then conned the public into thinking it was all his idea? That was a good trick. The same happened with respect to the 9/11 Commission: Bush was both for and against. And, the same with campaign finance reform.

These weren’t secrets, ladies and gentlemen of PunditLand. They were all supreme acts of shiftiness for you to take note of.

There have been Bush’s unconscionably contradictory positions on the hunting of Osama bin Laden. When it was politically expedient for Bush to say, “The most important thing is for us to find [him],” he said it; and when it was more expedient to say, “I don’t know where he is. I have no idea and I really don’t care,” he said that too.

And have the pundits actually forgotten the constantly changing rationales for the Iraq war? In a stunning disarray of shiftiness we heard WMD, regime change, humanitarianism, threats to national security, Saddam was one bad dude, Iraqi democracy, fuzzy 9/11 links, Middle East democracy, the U.N.’s weakness, Iraq’s centrality in the front against terrorism….

Undoubtedly I left some out. It’s just that George shifted lanes so often, who could keep up?

Yet now, all this fuss over the president’s shifting standard for the level of malfeasance he’ll tolerate. Just being involved in unethical practices was once the publicly avowed standard, but anyone capable of drawing breath knew that was an impossibly high one for this White House. There’d soon be no one left to mind the store.

So by and by came the “committed a crime” standard. Next will come the “has been indicted” standard, then “has been convicted” standard, followed by the “anyone presently serving time” standard, then “anyone denied parole” standard, possibly ending with the “anyone who would have failed to pass an FBI background check on the fourth day of the fifth week prior to my father’s administration” standard -- George’s personal standard.

Meanwhile, in the “Was that really news?” department, administration officials announced Monday and again yesterday that the president’s Supreme Court nomination process was “moving far faster than they expected.” No kidding. Bush would have named the White House doorman to shove the broadening Rove story off the front page.

But here’s a final thought I’d like to leave with pundits and their press corps colleagues before they move on to Bush’s “mainstream” judicial pick of John Roberts, something else he’ll parse. Rather than asking the president what his ever forward-shifting standard for pink-slipping hooligans is, why not ask what he knew about the security breach and Rove’s strategy to cover up the White House’s involvement and subsequent perjurious acts and when did he know it?

Then we can start tracking the differing takes from straight-talkin’ George on those, too.

George W. Nixon

It’s beginning to look a lot like the Nixon White House, minus the warmth.

A criminal war, a criminal staff, an attack-dog mentality, politics over policy, the systematic smearing of critics -- and now, government surveillance of harmless domestic organizations.

“The FBI has thousands of pages of records in its files relating to the monitoring of civil rights, environmental and similar advocacy groups,” reported the Washington Post yesterday. For instance there are more than 3500 pages of -- get this -- “counterterrorism” surveillance info on the American Civil Liberties Union and Greenpeace alone, as well as surveillance records on such outfits as United for Peace and Justice, an antiwar, cyber coalition. Yes, they just don’t come any more threatening than folks united for peace and justice.

As a sample -- and this would be funny stuff if it weren’t for the cryptofascism -- the FBI records contain a September 2003 memo alerting counterterrorism units in New York, Los Angeles and Boston “about Internet sites that were promoting protests at the 2004 Republican National Convention.” Asked the ACLU’s outraged executive director: “Why is this being labeled as counterterrorism when it’s nothing more than protests at a political convention, a lawful First Amendment activity?”

Two straightforward factors address that. We have a White House that eagerly chose to position itself as the people’s protector against terrorism; and, of deeper import, that White House is populated at the highest levels by disturbed partisans who will not -- pathologically cannot -- separate protection from the politics of it.

A related story by the L.A. Times, also reported yesterday, serves as confirmation: “A source directly familiar with information provided to prosecutors said [Karl] Rove’s interest [in Joseph Wilson] was so strong that … when asked at one point why he was pursuing the diplomat so aggressively, Rove reportedly responded: ‘He’s a Democrat.’”

That’s pure Nixonian, third-rate-burglary logic in a nutshell. The opposition is monolithic in thought, if not deed: Democrats, liberals, terrorists, the ACLU, environmental and peace groups -- they’re all one in the same; equally suspicious and equally deserving of the rawest treatment.

We thought we were through with the miscreant Bob Haldemans and John Ehrlichmans reporting to an imperially complicit president for at least a couple generations, but we’ve already replaced them with the Karl Roves and Lewis Libbys. Twice now in my lifetime we’ve had barbarians inside the gate of the world’s oldest democracy. But there are a couple major differences between then and now that frighten even more: Today we’ve no aggressive press to routinely shine light on these roaches, and so far, we’ve no gutsy Deep Throat.

In fact, even a notional Mark Felt is undergoing historical revision by the paroled political underworld as the prototypical Evil One whom our brave new democracy should guard against. For example Chuck “when you’ve got them by the balls” Colson has written that Felt’s participation in outing executive-branch criminality was “dishonorable,” and he told Christianity Today magazine that any adult admiration of Felt is “terrible” because -- and remember, this is coming from one of the darkest princes of American politics -- such admiration seduces our children into “Machiavellian ethics.”

Switch on any political gab show and you’re as likely to see other Nixon mobsters similarly commenting on Felt’s ethics -- indeed, on government ethics in general -- as a Woodward or Bernstein. I suspect these are also metaphorical defenses of Bush’s corruption, and we’ll know the jig is close to being up if these veteran commentators start smearing special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

The Bush administration has become so manifestly awful that the media may, in time, smell some easy profit in hounding it. I’m not counting on that, though. If the administration can get a pass on an illegal war that has killed thousands needlessly and needlessly will kill thousands more, what’s a little breach of national security and secret-police surveillance of peaceniks?

Meanwhile, somewhere, Dick Nixon must be smiling.

Our Father, who art in Washington

Last Friday Paul Krugman of the New York Times wrote about our sorry political condition in a piece titled “Karl Rove’s America.” His cause for lament was that “there is no longer such a thing as nonpolitical truth,” which is to say there is no Truth in Rove’s world. The GOP elite, observed Krugman, have contorted, lied about, misrepresented, exploited or sidestepped virtually every issue and smeared every critic -- and it all goes down easily with “the faithful,” who happily “follow the twists and turns of the party line with a loyalty that would have pleased the Comintern.”

Yes, and you can test that proposition by watching the faces of any Bush audience, which grin and fawn as though the truth is descending from on High, no matter how far removed it is from reality. Of course dog-and-pony-show pundits then regurgitate the talking-points Republican “truth” in conservative setting after conservative setting in the liberal media.

After surveying the sordid history of the Bush administration’s lies, smears, etc., Krugman finished with, “How did our political system get to this point?” He partly answered this question in the preceding line: “Mr. Bush … has always known that his trusted political adviser … is a thug.” So what could we expect? But something else soon caught my attention that seemed to suggest another partial answer.

While heading to the Politics section of the Washington Post I noticed a headline in Health. I assure you that as a man known to endure a strict diet of cigarettes, cinnamon schnapps and double cheeseburgers I am decidedly not an avid student of the Health section, but this was too enticing to leave uninvestigated: “Prayer's Power to Heal Strangers Is Examined.”

It seems the smartest man alive is one Mitchell W. Krucoff, a Duke University cardiologist. He must be really brilliant, because somehow he finagled a government grant or somebody of a chump’s cash to fund the multiyear-research conclusion that “praying for sick strangers does not improve their prospects of recovering.”

More precisely: “The study of more than 700 heart patients, one of the most ambitious attempts to test the medicinal power of prayer, showed that those who had people praying for them from a distance, and without their knowledge, were no less likely to suffer a major complication, end up back in the hospital or die.”

Now keep in mind that Dr. Krucoff was given money for this stunningly predictable outcome. But there were nettlesome problems with the medieval methodology; for instance it “could not accurately measure factors as fundamental as the ‘dose’ of prayer administered and could not account for the possible effects of family members praying for patients on their own, the researchers noted.”

That was all the opening needed for other “researchers” of a preconceived bent to declare that “the study showed the need for additional research.” (One happens to be conducting a “federally funded study” of the power of prayer on healing wounds. That’s “federally funded.” As in the federal government. As in your tax dollars.) In short, no amount of contradictory findings will ever deter, discourage or sway those who simply choose to believe.

In matters of religious faith, that’s fine. I too hold spiritual beliefs, which, of course, by definition lie outside scientific verifiability. But when Krugman asked “How did our political system get to this point,” I think part of the answer lies in his too-figurative use of the term, the GOP “faithful.”

That is, for many among us the same level of pure, unverifiable faith properly rooted in spirituality has improperly spilled over into secular beliefs. Faith in the GOP is to politics what faith in God is to religion. No evidence of its good government is required and no facts to the contrary will ever make any difference to the True Believer.

We -- or I should say, the red half of us -- have forsaken the Age of Reason and plunged headlong into the Age of Faith. We have neocon faith, discredited time after time. We have supply-side economic faith, discredited time after time. We have groundless faith in global warming as garbage and faith in teenage abstinence and even faith that Saddam really did have those weapons. Facts are irrelevant. Faith is all that’s required to know the truth of the matter.

So yes, the GOP “faithful” will indeed “follow … the party line with a loyalty that would have pleased the Comintern.” And why not? Reason and analysis are out. Pure, disembodied faith is in. And there is no more stubborn foe of an informed democracy.

Out of Iraq? Or out of the Middle East?

Twenty-four Iraqi children just gave their lives so that George W. Bush could boldly “stay the course.” The suicide car bomb that took these young innocents, who did nothing more than gather around some American soldiers with candy, also claimed a family eating breakfast and four workers resting nearby. Last September, 34 other children were killed in a similar incident.

But good for these brave kids and their grieving parents. They knew how to show the insurgents who’s in charge. Right?

Since the American occupation began at an eventual cost of at least 1800 of our own, the civilian body count has been estimated by Iraqi officials at 12,000 to date, though a report last year put the count even then as high as 100,000. Whatever the true count, the carnage has experienced an upswing since the January 30 elections that installed Prime Minster Ibrahim al-Jaafari’s government. That electoral milestone, as you’ll recall, was hailed by the Bush administration as a great leap forward in securing a peaceful and independent Iraq. That was also 24 children ago -- and there’s no end in sight.

The routine and continuing bloodshed in Iraq makes clear to any rational observer that “staying the course” is not working. In fact, the present U.S. course is counterproductive for those it’s intended to help and, indeed, self-destructive. Antiwar advocates postulated this outcome well before this war of choice began. But let’s put that I-told-you-so truth aside and move on to what I imagine a growing number of antiwar advocates are now thinking. Perhaps they’re just as correct on this as they were on the invasion -- and God knows they couldn’t be any more wrong than the neocons have been.

It’s time to contemplate withdrawal not just from Iraq, but from the Middle East at large; and not just combat troops, but our entire military presence -- bases and all, Saudi Arabia and all -- that has caused and guarantees permanent violence there, here, London, take your pick. In a new book titled Dying to Win, political scientist Robert Pape argues from meticulous research that the overwhelming number of suicide bombings globally have stemmed not from extremist Islamist hatred of Western freedom and democracy, as we’re repeatedly spoon-fed by the White House, but from resentment of foreign occupation.

Simply put, writes Pape, the terrorists’ objective is to “compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland.”

You’ll never hear this terrorist-insurgency rationale from Bush Inc. All you’ll hear is the hatred of freedom. But it’s a rationale that has reigned throughout the ages against all occupations. We ourselves used it 230 years ago. And we need to face the bleak reality that, in time, it’s a winning rationale.

Other than hurt pride, the most common objection to total withdrawal is the potential problem of access to oil in the absence of a military presence. Yet the withholding of oil from world markets would be economic suicide for the withholders and would only unite non-Middle Eastern nations to secure -- militarily if necessary -- what the modern world rightfully expects: fair access to a vital resource. But such an unlikely war would not be one of choice. It would be a true and justified war of survival. There’s no comparison.

We’ve tried and failed the neocon way. There exists a radical alternative to this radical problem and it should be honestly debated. Neocons, naturally, villainize withdrawal as appeasement and haul out the Munich analogies ad nauseam. Let them. They enjoy it. When regnant policies become so obviously self-destructive, however, those who put them in place and insist on keeping them there deservedly lose their seat at the table of reason.

For all his faults and screw-ups, Tony Blair did say something following the London bombings that made imminent sense. It was also quite revealing. In a meeting with Muslim legislators he proposed urgent talks with local Muslim leaders to “debate the right way forward.” He didn’t suggest the armed occupation of Muslim neighborhoods in Britain. Why? Because he understands the explosive counterproductivity of such a move.

Bush is beyond help, of course, but perhaps someday Mr. Blair can extend his understanding to an international scale.

Go ahead and call it appeasement if you like. I call it a hard reality in the national interest that will be inevitably realized. It may as well be sooner than later.

Anatomy of a Hardball gang-babble

I watch Hardball on occasion hoping for some dram of enlightenment, which, I suppose, renders me the very model of Einstein’s definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

With every show, host Chris Matthews seems to become more muddleheaded as well as deceitful, and I never quite know which quality is on display. After all, muddleheadedness is such an inseparable part of modern conservative thought -- something that Matthews has swallowed pretty much wholesale -- sometimes what seems like deceit may only be a manifestation of disorganized thinking.

At any rate, Hardball is what passes for political analysis on television these days, so we’re (I’m) stuck with it. And whether befuddled or bogus, Matthews was really on his game last Monday night.

In a segment devoted to the Rove affair, Matthews had gathered syndicated columnist E.J. Dionne and the New York Post’s Washington bureau chief, Deborah Orin. (In today’s political environment it’s OK to have a single conservative guest, but any liberal -- Dionne -- must be offset. Hence Orin’s contributions, which were almost as bad as Matthews’.) The result was less than enlightening.

I offer evidence:

ORIN: You could argue that it is pretty clear that Karl Rove wasn't trying to get even with Joe Wilson. He was trying to make it clear that Joe Wilson couldn't be trusted.

MATTHEWS: Right.

Appallingly, Matthews failed to point out to the audience Orin’s talking-points parroting of the developing Republican defense-offense of trashing Wilson. Said Orin later, incredibly: “What's more important [than the security leak story] is … that Joe Wilson didn't tell the truth.” Her shell game went unchallenged by Matthews throughout.

But poor, lonely, singularly insightful E.J. Dionne. He tried to get at what’s really at issue: not Wilson’s probity, but a national security breach, possible perjury, the orchestrated GOP effort to dismiss both and the accompanying hypocrisy of it all.

DIONNE: You're going to face a very interesting debate here, because you had just a few years back a lot of Republicans saying a president should be impeached if he was guilty of perjury or obstruction of justice. This investigation seems … to be moving toward a perjury probe. What are [Republicans] going to say now compared to what they said all those years ago?

At this juncture Matthews said something that only a qualified cognitive therapist could decipher.

MATTHEWS: Well, why wouldn't they say the same thing? If you're a Democrat, you wanted to nail Nixon. If you're a Democrat, you want to nail Bush.

Dionne seemed as baffled as I at this psychotic break, but kept his composure and repeated the fundamental point that somehow seemed to go right over Matthews’ head.

DIONNE: But I'm saying, the Republicans were the ones saying obstruction of justice and perjury was a big deal for Clinton. Is it going to be a big deal for this administration?

Secondly, you had Scott McClellan running into a lot of tough questions today, where he basically said that he couldn't really defend what he said two years ago, not because he couldn't defend it, but because now he's been told by prosecutors that he couldn't say anything. This, too, is starting to sound like some questions and answers during the Clinton years.

ORIN: Oh, please.

DIONNE: So, I think the Republicans have a real problem here now.

ORIN: Oh, please. I mean, this is not Watergate. Democrats are always dreaming that they have got a new Watergate. This is not a new Watergate.

Did you follow that? Watergate? Did Dionne not repeatedly compare the scandal to Clinton’s problems only? Is Matthews’ attention-deficit disorder contagious in close proximity?

MATTHEWS: You know, the old argument in politics is, if there's something -- if there's a shot that's unfair against you, you'd better damn well correct it. Why has it taken until now for the truth [note "truth"] to come out from the other side, from the White House side, the explanation as to what these conversations -- E.J., pick up here.

At this point, having asked E.J. to “pick up,” Matthews rambles for 95 more words.

DIONNE: Right [and you could hear him mentally add, “you idiot”]. Well, let's be clear. Joe Wilson....

Matthews, of course, interrupts again. Ninety-five more needless words weren’t enough.

MATTHEWS: If it is that serious—is it that serious?

DIONNE: Well, first, attacking Joe Wilson right now, Joe Wilson is not the guy under investigation. The issue here is not what was true or false about what Joe Wilson may have said. The issue here is, did somebody break the law and disclose the name of a CIA agent?

MATTHEWS: We don't know that. You don't know that.

DIONNE: No. And I don't know the answer to that yet. But that is what is under investigation.

Dionne later makes another, final, desperate attempt to interject a pertinent comment.

DIONNE: All I'm saying is that, saying this or that about Joe Wilson doesn't address the issue that the White House faces right now, which is, who said what under what circumstances?

“Doesn’t address the issue.” That might as well be Matthews’ network slogan.

Perhaps we should all forfeit what little tranquility remains after watching Hardball’s amateur-hour spin by just watching the O’Reilly Factor instead. That should do it.

The incredible politics of incredible hypocrisy

What a difference a party label makes. When asked about the raging controversy over Karl Rove’s participation in outing an undercover CIA agent, “several Republican senators,” reported the New York Times, said “that they did not know enough or did not want to venture an opinion.”

In the political history racket, nailing down precise moments of party-wide change is usually an impossible task. There are too many variables in play, too many personalities involved, and too many transitions progressing at different rates. But when future generations look back and ask when, exactly, did Republican High Propriety on matters of executive-branch skullduggery kick in, they’ll have a precise answer: January 20, 2001.

I haven’t sunk a hundred grand into polling data on the correlation between the age-old scourge of political hypocrisy and electoral apathy, but I’d wager most people disdainful of politics and resigned from the process would tend to emphasize the same causation: “They’re all a bunch of crooks and hypocrites. It makes no difference who’s in office, so why bother voting?”

Admittedly some who say this are merely looking for a passable excuse to punt their civic duty. To say you’ve arrived at political apathy only after a long spell of philosophical indulgence takes on an almost noble, Thoureau-like detachment. But that’s often garbage. They just don’t want to take time away from the latest syndicated episode of Roseanne. But other political apostates do actually keep up and know what’s happening -- hence they also know the system stinks and they’d rather not play. It’s a passive-aggressive negation of democracy.

The Rove affair is one of those great moments in hypocrisy that drives this latter segment. And in the last decade the public has had good reason for growing despair and cynical withdrawal.

It was Republicans, remember, who were going to reverse “business as usual” in Washington. There were to be no more political games and no more hypocrisy hoedowns -- not from these guys. Full accountability. That was the key. They even signed a contract with the public saying so.

And for six years we did indeed see demands for accountability -- from the other side. If Hillary so much as forgot the details of a 10-year-old phone call, congressional Republicans hastily formed investigative committees and insisted on creating and then disseminating all the sordid facts. Or if Bill had a coffee-break date it amounted to a wrenching national crisis about which no Republican could withhold either comment, opinion or subpoena.

Once George was inaugurated, however … well, shucks, what’s an illegal war, for instance, compared to Oval Office jollies. As for Rove and Bush and McClellan and past White House absolutes on national security breaches and summary firings … well, shucks again, the same congressional Republicans just don’t know enough and don’t want to venture an opinion. Anything else would be improper.

When it comes to hypocrisy, it’s not that Democrats are amateurs; it’s just that Republicans are the world’s undefeated champions -- true pioneers in scaling new heights and dredging new lows. Democrats, though, should think twice about campaigning on the notion of “Vote for us: We’re not as bad as the other guys.” And although committed partisans tend to think that scandals like Rove’s will hurt only the opposition, the reality is they tend to suppress the overall vote. When voters say they’ve bowed out of the process because the parties are alike, they’re often speaking not of policy similarities, but of corruption and hypocrisy.

But who knows? It may be that the Bush administration in particular and its party in general have revealed themselves as so patently rotten, so utterly incompetent, so blatantly hypocritical that in the absence of any other message, Democrats could actually advance by default.

The sweet clash of the titans

If you want to do your part for the left, send two checks today to the right: one to the political-action arm of the Chamber of Commerce and another to that of the Southern Baptist Convention. Then sit back and enjoy, knowing you have helped finance the Right-Wing Family Feud.

The abovementioned lobbyists for corporate heavyweights and religious totalitarians are knocking heads over Sandra Day O’Connor’s replacement in their struggle for ideological supremacy within the GOP. In literary terms, they’re merely confirming John Huston’s 1948 brilliant, cinematic allegory of singular power and political ruthlessness. When Key Largo’s good-guy Frank McCloud (Humphrey Bogart) asks Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson) how much power is enough, the question catches the gangster off guard. He’s never really thought about it. So McCloud supplies the answer: “More.” At which point Rocco still fails to appreciate the futility of an infinite goal: “Yeah, that’s what I want. More.”

There’s not a reasonable soul alive who’d dispute that both big business and big religion don’t have “more” than enough already in today’s power heirarchy. I’d elaborate if it were necessary, but it’s so blithering obvious, I won’t bother. These 800-pound gorillas of the GOP, however, will never concede that they have enough. More is all that satisfies.

As such there is brewing the mother of all right-wing interfaith squabbles, one that could bring down the right’s entire, artificial edifice: “Setting up a potential clash with religious conservatives, the national business lobby for the first time is marshaling its forces to persuade the White House to pick an industry-friendly Supreme Court nominee…. Business leaders are working behind the scenes to influence the process, an action that threatens to break apart the long-standing Bush coalition of corporate and social conservatives.”

Big business is demanding a less-product-liability-hugging lapdog a la O’Connor, while big religion is demanding a ten-commandments-hugging lapdog a la Scalia, guaranteeing that one of these camps is going to be rather unhappy with whatever dog Bush chooses -- and thus with Bush, and thus with the party. The theocrats are already threatening wholesale mutiny: “If Bush fails to appoint a solid conservative on issues of abortion and gay marriage, [Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention] said that many Southern Baptist voters will withdraw from the public arena.” So if you can afford to send only one check, I’d say best send it to the Chamber of Commerce.

A few lines ago I mentioned this squabble could bring down the right’s “artificial” edifice, only because that’s what has prevailed since right wingers got their ideological act together more than 40 years ago.

In the years leading up to the Goldwater phenomenon, far-right strategists set out to meld an ideological synthesis that would bring its traditionally opposing factions together in a unified front against liberalism. The leading thinker (in my opinion) along these lines was a dialectic-loving, former Marxist by the name of Frank Meyer. In 1960 he laid it on the line in a famous essay urging that Christian traditionalists and economic libertarians come together and strive for electoral victory through “a hard-fought dialectic -- but a dialectic in which both sides recognize not only that they have a common enemy [in liberalism], but also that, despite all differences, they hold a common heritage … of reason [capitalism] operating within tradition [Christianity; emphases original].”

What Meyer proposed was elegantly simple -- that traditionalists and libertarians put their major differences aside in the pursuit of power.

They did, largely, and electorally they thrived. But it was always a shaky and contrived alliance, with old and profoundly real differences lingering all the while. Now that they have the power they sought -- and now, especially, that the lack of a once-strong liberalism fails to unify -- both seek preeminence and neither is willing to play second banana.

In his forward thinking Meyer neglected to mention the one dialectical inevitability, however -- every synthesis splits, creating a new antithesis. And that, it is to be hoped, is what’s happening right now to the right now.

Nothing kills so softly like success.

(For more on this topic, see last week’s piece, “The Revolutionary Right’s Bloody Civil War”)

Karl Rove on sodium pentothal

Mr. Rove’s famous speech redelivered, moments after his icy veins are injected with industrial-strength truth serum.

Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.

Ah, that’s not right. I feel odd. Gee, I almost feel … like … telling the … truth.

Let’s try that again, folks. Strike the other. Here’s what pretty much went down …

Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for the greatest propaganda blitz in political history. Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and foolishly let us take advantage of it.

Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and promptly prepared to invade the wrong country. Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and cowered themselves into permitting it.

Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and prepared for reciprocal savagery -- innocent men, women and children, made no difference to us, just like the 9/11 skunks. Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare for a more intelligent “war on terrorism,” starting with the understanding that the mobilization of men and hardware against a nebulous tactic, an amorphous concept, is a waste of men and hardware -- and devastating to innocents and our national honor.

Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and prepared for some badly needed image-polishing of the biggest loser ever to sit in the White House. Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and had a helluva time trying to contain their laughter at photo-ops of our chief chickenhawk trying to look tough.

Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and prepared to bribe global friends into supporting our Iraq scheme to give us political cover. Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and saw that Iraq was already contained by the coalition of the willing, known as the United Nations.

Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and then trashed the greatest supply of global good will this nation has ever witnessed. Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and hoped to use this good will to the nation’s advantage.

Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and soon phonied up all kinds of crapola as to our motivations and justifications for invading Iraq. Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and kidded themselves into buying it.

Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and prepared not one whit for Iraq’s post-invasion phase. Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to know how in God’s name the neocons could have been so stupid.

Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and prepared to create a new, improved, and much larger terrorist magnet and training ground in the Middle East. Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and saw the deadly counterproductivity of our efforts.

Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and declared war on domestic dissent. Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and saw the evil that intolerance reaps.

And finally, folks, conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and prepared to cover up our almost incomprehensible incompetence in ignoring what top counterterrorism experts had been trying to tell us. Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer anything but therapy and understanding for us, the conservatives, the clowns who brought you the Iraq insanity.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We couldn’t have done it without you. Ain’t it amazing how we’ve gotten away with so much for so long?

Well, gotta run. Have to call my defense lawyer.