Quote of the day

Frank Rich in the New York Times (I recommend you read this carefully and let it sink in):

The Bush administration did not make us safer either before or after 9/11. Obama is not making us less safe. If there’s another terrorist attack, it will be because the mess the Bush administration ignored in Pakistan and Afghanistan spun beyond anyone’s control well before Americans could throw the bums out.

--the BB

'Thousands of Aliens' in U.S. Flight Schools Illegally

When you put people who don't believe government works in charge of government, they prove themselves right. This is why, from Reagan forward, modern so-called conservatism is a really bad idea. They came in to dismantle government and they have succeeded admirably.

What brought on this rantlet? Read on.

Thousands of foreign student pilots have been able to enroll and obtain pilot licenses from U.S. flight schools, despite tough laws passed in the wake of the 9/ll attacks, according to internal government documents obtained by ABC News.

"Some of the very same conditions that allowed the 9-11 tragedy to happen in the first place are still very much in existence today," wrote one regional security official to his boss at the TSA, the Transportation Security Administration.

"Thousands of aliens, some of whom may very well pose a threat to this country, are taking flight lessons, being granted FAA certifications and are flying planes," wrote the TSA official, Richard A. Horn, in 2005, complaining that the students did not have the proper visas.

You can read the whole thing at ABC News. I took the header from them also.

That George W. Bush sure has done a bang-up job making us safer.

h/t John Aravosis at Americablog
--the BB

Dissembler in chief-updated

Some enterprising freeway blogger

Photo via Dependable Renegade

Or perhaps it's "disassembler in chief," given how Bush has dismantled so much that had been built up over the decades to foster the common good and preserve our democracy.

Juan Cole addresses once more the bushwa that King George IV routinely shovels. He prefaces his response to the SOTU speech thus:

As usual, most of what he said in the State of the Union address was transparent lies. He praised private groups for doing charity work in Louisiana because he hasn't followed through on his own promises after Katrina. He did that phony thing of reporting the average tax "increase" if his "tax cuts" were allowed to expire. If I'm in the room with someone who made a billion dollars last year and Bush doesn't cut my taxes at all but he cuts those of the billionaire such that he saves 5% of his income, then the two of us in the room have an average tax cut of $25 million apiece. But in the real world, I get bupkus and the billionaire gets $50 million. That shell game sums up the Republican "tax cut" scam they keep running on the American middle class, which always falls for it.

Read it all here.

Center for American Progress has an article by Daniel J. Weiss looking at Bush's words on energy issues vs. reality. They also compare Bush on troop withdrawals and the sadder reality.

There are many other sites contrasting W's words with his actual record or with reality outside Bush's bubble. I especially recommend a visit to Think Progress. Just scroll down for refutation after refutation.

Let us be grateful we will not have to hear him stand before Congress and the nation and peddle bullshit again. Alas, he has many months left in which to inflict damage and disaster on the nation and the world. It will take decades to undo the damage he has already done. We should not deceive ourselves about the immensity of that task. Yet we must take it up if we love our nation and if we would seek the life of the world.

UPDATE:

Bush's false assessment of Afghanistan gets reassessed at National Security Network.
Washington, D.C.-A fact check from the National Security Network on President Bush's State of the Union comments regarding Afghanistan show the country is still in a state of disrepair. Bush claimed that:

A nation that was once a safe haven for al Qaida is now a young democracy where boys and girls are going to school, new roads and hospitals are being built, and people are looking to the future with new hope.

On each point, Bush is absolutely wrong.

Click the link for details.
h/t to Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars

See updates on post above for other analyses of Bush's "inaccuracies."

--the BB

They can't do anything right

Scout Finch reports at Daily Kos on the Inspector General's report on Iraq, recently acquired by CBS News. This sentence captures a lot:

The US military can account for less than 800 of 13,500 weapons they have supplied the "Iraqi security forces."

When ideologues who don't know what they are doing jump into situations ill-informed, ill-prepared, and way too certain of themselves this is what you get. This and myriads upon myriads of dead.

Cui bono? [Who gains?] The military-industrial complex, folks like Halliburton and their subsidiary KBR, Blackwater, et al. The oil and gas industry. And the causes of theocratic radicalism (whether Muslim or Christian or other). Yes, we have played into the hands of those who foster terror.

Cui malo? [Who loses?] The Iraqi people, the little inchoate stability the Middle East has, America's position in the world, the Bill of Rights, basically everybody except war profiteers, terrorists, and those who don't believe in government and want to weaken it enough to "drown in a bathtub."

Why God does not despair is, frankly, beyond me. Lucky for us God doesn't.
--the BB

It has happened before

Grandmère Mimi alerted me today to General Ricardo Sanchez's comments in the New York Times about a “catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan” in Iraq. Well big effing "duh!"

General Sanchez said he was convinced that the American effort in Iraq was failing the day after he took command, in June 2003. Asked why he waited until nearly a year after his retirement to voice his concerns publicly, he responded that it was not the place of active-duty officers to challenge lawful orders from the civilian authorities.

Excuse me. Invasion and occupation of a sovereign nation that has neither attacked us nor poses any immediate threat to us constitutes a violation of international and U.S. law. It is what we quaintly call "a war crime." Just because [expletive deleted] was recognized as President by the Supreme Court does not make anything he orders lawful. The Nixon asssetion that whatever the President does is thereby lawful just doesn't pass muster. Didn't then. Doesn't now.

I share Grandmère's outrage that people who knew this from the beginning did not speak up when it might have made a difference. For all who have since perished or been injured, maimed, displaced, or dispossessed since then it is now too late. And we are having one devil of a time trying to even have a discussion of extrication, much less any action toward the same.

“There has been a glaring and unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders,” he said, adding that civilian officials have been “derelict in their duties” and guilty of a “lust for power.”

A lust for power. That, and delusions of glory, hoping to "bring" (how patronizing) democracy to the benighted folks in other lands. Or worse, insane delusions about triggering Armageddon so Jesus will come. Oh yes, they are that crazy, and that religious fringe has deliberately made huge inroads in our military.

Vanity of vanity, all is vanity, saith the preacher.

It has happened before.
Strong men put up a city and got
a nation together,
And paid singers to sing and women
to warble: We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation,
nothing like us ever was.

And while the singers sang
and the strong men listened
and paid the singers well
and felt good about it all,
there were rats and lizards who listened
… and the only listeners left now
… are … the rats … and the lizards.

From Carl Sandburg, Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind (1922)

Democracy is not a spectator sport. We all have an obligation to inform ourselves and take action so that those we elect remember why we elected them.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

You will note the pointed absence of references to empire building in the Preamble.

--the BB

Update: John Bruhns, Iraq vet, has his own comments on General Sanchez's words at Americablog.