The Dish

An honest response from another reader to this post:

Frankly none of the ramp-up to the Iraq War passed the smell test at any point. So, I get annoyed by statements like this:

But conservatives and a lot of moderates rallied around Bush and Co. because of the unfair attacks from the left and the media, whose objectivity was never in evidence, and in doing so we ratified and enabled every bad decision Bush and Co. made in Iraq.

"Unfair attacks by the media"? Huh? I had to dig deep into any newspaper to find any story that wasn’t merely parroting White House talking points. Our "objectivity wasn’t in evidence"? How do you objectively point out that our country is being lied into a war by a bunch of corrupt incompetents? I mean how do you objectively do that while being called a traitor, or worse, at every turn?

I’ve finally figured out my crime. I was right too soon.

This Youtube of a Congressional hearing speaks for itself. Tax-payers’ money is being spent by federal agencies in order to advance the Rove machine. There’s a pattern here, isn’t there?

That seems to be the British response to the capture of Royal Navy sailors. Their first offer was classic under-statement:

The first British tactic had been to offer Iran an easy way out. The Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett gave the co-ordinates of the British sailors to the Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and suggested that there might have been a "mistake".

Iran at first offered a different co-ordinate and then, when it was pointed out that even this was in Iraqi waters, another reading was given, this time on the Iranian side.

Three strikes and they’re out! This, however, is a serious matter and the plain deception of the Iranian regime strongly indicates that this is a deliberate provocation. All the more reason, perhaps, not to take the bait. Slowly, international pressure on Tehran is rising; isolation is growing and this incident can be leveraged to increase that isolation at the U.N.. This may, of course, be a signal that Tehran is going to react to greater sanctions with greater belligerence. In all of this, the fear, of course, is that hotheads will prevail. But this is a time to be cool. That is different from craven. And yes, the sight of a free Briton being forced to wear a headscarf angers up the blood.

He is sickened all over again:

At one point Sen. [Lindsey] Graham asked the audience who among us considered Army specialist Joe Darby a hero. Darby was the one who initially gave the Abu Ghraib photos to Army investigators. Pausing just a few seconds, Graham used the momentary silence as a cue to continue talking about how the American people really don’t care about torture.

For me, the worst part is that I have found this to be generally true. It is more convenient for people not to care. By and large, they are far more prepared to accept official explanations than to take the trouble to find out what is really going on. For, if they found out, their consciences might require them to do something about it.

Sen. Graham’s demeanor was downright eerie in the way he chose to relate to the crowd … beaming with a kind of delight and mocking the outrage that he must have seen building. This reminded me of my experience in Iraq, where I would hear soldiers discussing their abuse of detainees. It was always cast as a humorous thing, and each recounting won the expected – sometimes forced – laugh.

But now I am in Washington, I thought. Has everyone been bitten by the torture bug? I was sickened to watch a senior senator and lawyer flippantly dismiss what happened at Abu Ghraib, and act as though he knew more about the abuses than the people, like me, who were there. Sadly, Graham is not the first elected official who has become part of the problem rather than the solution.

Check out the comments on Bruce Bartlett’s latest column complaining that Ann Coulter does more damage to conservatism than good. The base is with Coulter. As one commenter nicely puts it:

What’s his solution? Why, for conservatives to stop pulling the Democrat chains. Don’t call fags fags, and the whole uncomfortable subject will just go away.

Meanwhile, Coulter is a guest at the upcoming Media Research Center dinner. You can watch it live Thursday night and see how adored she still is.

More staggering incompetence.

Not so much.

This is pretty hard to beat:

"I don’t have sex with my monkey. That’s absolute crap. Why would I do that? I gave him an audiotape, but it didn’t have anything like that on it. It said, ‘I’m coming home, I’m coming to get you. Daddy’s coming, he’s coming to get you.’"

Daddy’s coming, Bonzo. Daddy’s coming. (Hat tip: Rod).

I’ve been mocked for taking the Christianist right at its word with respect to fusing politics and religion. But James Dobson keeps proving that Christianism truly is a sectarian movement that has transformed the GOP into a religious rather than a political party. Here he is on Fred Thompson:

"Everyone knows he’s conservative and has come out strongly for the things that the pro-family movement stands for. [But] I don’t think he’s a Christian; at least that’s my impression."

One of Dobson’s spokesmen helpfully clarified the GOP power-broker’s words:

"We use that word—Christian—to refer to people who are evangelical Christians. Dr. Dobson wasn’t expressing a personal opinion about his reaction to a Thompson candidacy; he was trying to ‘read the tea leaves’ about such a possibility."

A religious test for public office – clearly stated by the GOP’s most powerful base figure. Catholics aren’t real Christians either, according to Dobson. Now maybe people will take the threat to secular politics seriously. Here’s the acid test: see if any of the other Republican candidates or a leading figure in the Bush administration attacks Dobson’s position. This is getting interesting.