From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
I used to like March 19th
Not so much anymore. It's the day Republicans shot our country in the face and expected a parade of sweets and flowers for it. Today is the eleventh anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. As its architects and cheerleaders---assisted by a still-fawning press that always has room for them in the Sunday morning lineups---try to rehabilitate their images by crapping out falsehood-riddled books sprinkled with revisionist fairy dust, let's remember what they really said as it all went down. Please feel free to hurl rotten tomatoes as you see fit...
On Sept. 7, 2002, [Judith Miller] and fellow New York Times reporter Michael Gordon reported that Iraq had "stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb." As proof, she cited unnamed "American intelligence experts" and unnamed "Bush administration officials." Subsequently, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Donald Rumsfeld all pointed to Miller’s story as justification for war. On April 22, 2003, she told PBS’s Newshour that WMD had already been found in Iraq: "Well, I think they found something more than a ’smoking gun.’"
---Think Progress
"Saddam Hussein's baby powder program-
related activities must be stopped!"
"Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof---the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."
---George W. Bush (10/7/02)
"We’re not going to have a bloodletting of trading American bodies for Iraqi bodies." "We will win this conflict. We will win it easily."
---John McCain (9/29/02 and 1/22/03)
"My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence."
---Colin Powell, United Nations Speech (2/5/03)
"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." ... "My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators."
---Dick Cheney (8/28/02) and (3/16/03)
"[T]he area in the south and the west and the north that coalition forces control is substantial. It happens not to be the area where weapons of mass destruction were dispersed. We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
---Donald Rumsfeld (3/30/03)
"Those WMDs must be around
here somewhere. HehHehHeh..."
"There's a certain amount of pop psychology in America that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq's always been very secular."
---Bill Kristol (4/1/03)
"We're all neocons now."
---Chris Matthews (4/9/03), typical of the many Democratic war enablers who blew with the political winds and later became doves of convenience when everything went to shit.
"The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside liberals."
---Charles Krauthammer (4/19/03)
Ted Koppel: [Y]ou’re not suggesting that the rebuilding of Iraq is going to be done for $1.7 billion?
Andrew Natsios [Agency for International Development]: Well, in terms of the American taxpayer's contribution, I do. This is it for the U.S.
---Nightline (4/23/03)
And six years ago today, as the sands were running out of the Bush presidency's hourglass, the biggest war hawk of them all
finally dropped all pretense on national TV:
Martha Raddatz: Two-third of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.
Cheney: So?
Martha Raddatz: So? You don’t care what the American people think?
Cheney: No.
And as if the staggering loss of life---both military and civilian---wasn't bad enough, there's this little stat that popped up last year:
Minimum amount of time that taxpayers will be paying costs associated with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: 100 years
(Source: AP analysis)
And what of Commander Codpiece? Today he spends his time painting pictures of dogs and Jay Leno in the bathtub, virtually excommunicated from the party that once marched in lockstep behind him and his giant bulge. He oughtta be painting license plates in Leavenworth.
So, yeah. Not a big fan of March 19th anymore. How's your day going?
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Note: I really should take the Christmas lights down.
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16 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til the 2014 enrollment period for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act ends:
12
Days 'til the
Dogwood Arts Rhythm & Blooms Festival in Knoxville, Tennessee:
16
Percent of people signing up for health insurance enrollments via Obamacare who are women and men, respectively:
55%, 45%
(Source: AP)
Portion of taxpayer-funded research whose findings are not available to the public for free:
1/2
(Source: Harper's Index)
Length of the
Nova Star cruise ship, which will ferry up to 1,210 people plus vehicles between Portland Maine and Yarmouth Nova Scotia starting in May:
529 feet
Cost to drive it from its current location in Singapore to Maine, a 10,000 mile journey:
$1 million
(Source:
The Portland Press Herald)
Percent of TV-related tweets last year that were about sports:
50%
(Source: Nielsen Research)
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 187 (including 5 Persias and 1 merry prankster in the sky). Soul Protection Factor 24 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: When shelter dogs become woozles of art
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CHEERS to getting due recognition…finally. I may play "Whack-A-Neocon" with reckless abandon (especially today), but I never denigrate the service of the grunts who have to carry out the orders. And yesterday some serious injustices were retro-justiced when President Obama bestowed the Medal of Honor on 24 veterans---all but three of them posthumously---who had been denied the award because we were kinda dumb back then:
President Barack Obama recognizes Medal of Honor honorees, from left, Staff Sergeant
Melvin Morris, Sergeant First Class Jose Rodela, and Specialist Four Santiago J. Erevia,
during the Medal of Honor ceremony in the East Room of the White House.
Each veteran honored today had already received the Distinguished Service Cross---the nation's second-highest military award---but 19 of them were previously overlooked for the Medal of Honor due to their racial or ethnic backgrounds. Today's ceremony follows a 12-year Pentagon review, ordered by Congress, of past discrimination in the military.
Wow. It's so inspiring to read something like that. Congress actually did something good.
CHEERS to avian homecomings. Another sign of impending SPRING! Once they make it through Customs, the swallows will be returning to the San Juan Capistrano Mission in California today. One small difference: this year they're coming to feast on human flesh!!! Which, of course, means the only surviving witness there will be the Fox News reporter.
CHEERS to Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na…Statman! So the interwebiverse is all abuzz with the arrival of former Daily Kos poster Nate Silver (aka poblano) at his brand new digs at his brand new FiveThirtyEight.com:
Among other things, Nate will track
the growth of Teletubby eggs this spring.
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We’ve expanded our staff from two full-time journalists to 20 and counting. Few of them will focus on politics exclusively; instead, our coverage will span five major subject areas---politics, economics, science, life and sports. [...]
By no means do we think that everything can be broken down into a formula or equation. On the contrary, one of our roles will be to critique incautious uses of statistics when they arise elsewhere in news coverage. At other times, we’ll explore ways that consumers can use data to their advantage and level the playing field against corporations and governments.
But mostly it will be the place we'll point and laugh at when Nate gets something wrong. Because it hardly ever happens and some of us are annoying little twits.
JEERS to no further information. Regarding the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, we have no further information so we're going to spare you the conjecture and distract you with an amazing cat trick:
Stay tuned for breaking news and bulletins. And somebody check under the other three cups to make sure, y'know, no plane.
Mega Memory sold like hotcakes,
and the return rate was very low.
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JEERS to hucksters' hucksterins. True confession: I used to help sell one of Kevin Trudeau's products---though I didn't work for him directly---back in the 90s: the
Mega Memory program (on long-play
cassettes, no less). I only met him once in person, and that was when he visited the marketing firm I worked for here in Portland, and even then only as he was getting a quick tour of the place. I'll never forget he wore an ostentatious Al Capone-style hat, and the symbolism now fits him to a tee. But he was a hawker virtually without peer in those days (Popeil will always be king), using both his charm and pitch-perfect sales techniques to make our call center phones ring off the hook. But then he went off in his own direction, and cranked his huckster dial up ton 11 with "miracle" weight loss and bogus health products that took advantage of the gullible by baffling them with bullshit. Trudeau was sentenced yesterday to
ten years in prison for that. Now maybe they can go after all the economy-killing Wall Street weasels who cranked their huckster dials up to 110 with "miracle" financial instruments that took advantage of the gullible by baffling them with bullshit. Yeah---I'm sure they'll get
right on that.
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Five years ago in C&J: March 19, 2009
CHEERS to amazing discoveries. In Alberta, Canada, paleontologists have dug up the remains of a small 75 million year-old dinosaur. It's a significant find because small creatures tended to get eaten or swept away by the elements. It was evidently an annoying, noisy little ankle-biter. Scientists are calling it the "chicken raptor." Latin name: Glennus Beckus.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to #McConnelling. That's the Twitter hashtag created by Jon Stewart, accompanied by an invitation for viewers to use it as they add their own background music to Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell's bizarre "softer side of Mitch" campaign ad. There have been a lot of great submissions, but for my money the best so far is the one Kossack Thinking Fella alerted me to. I won’t spoil the surprise except to say I think Bob Dole finally met his match:
If you find yourself watching it over and over for more than four hours, see your doctor. Probably the psychiatrist kind.
Have a creepy smiley Wednesday. :) Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Bill Kristol Has A Fantastic New Never-Been-Tried-Before Idea: Even More Cheers and Jeers!
---Wonkette
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