You’ve likely seen this elsewhere, but in case you haven’t, what the hell:

Sunday’s UK Times reported that Petraeus is expected to testify that Iran joined Sadr’s men fighting in Basra:

IRANIAN forces were involved in the recent battle for Basra, General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, is expected to tell Congress this week.

Military and intelligence sources believe Iranians were operating at a tactical command level with the Shi’ite militias fighting Iraqi security forces; some were directing operations on the ground, they think.

Petraeus intends to use the evidence of Iranian involvement to argue against any reductions in US forces.

Dr Daniel Goure, a defence analyst at the Lexington Institute in Virginia, said: “There is no question that Petraeus will be tough on Iran. It is one thing to withdraw troops when there is purely sectarian fighting but it is another thing if it leaves the Iranians to move in.”

~~~

A senior Iraqi official who met Petraeus last week said, “It will be difficult to show that the situation is improving.” Another Iraqi source described the US general as “furious” that al-Maliki moved against the militias into Basra without consultation and had to rely on US forces to bail him out.

Abu Ahmed, a senior military commander with the Awakening, the Sunni tribal movement cooperating with US forces, said progress was largely the result of al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army ceasefire.

“When the Mahdi Army decides to resume its activities, neither the American troops nor the Iraqi government will be able to stop it,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Telegraph reports that the British government — which bases its declining contingent in Basra province, near the Iranian border, is fearful that Petraeus will push for military action against Iran:

British fear US commander is beating the drum for Iran strikes

British officials gave warning yesterday that America’s commander in Iraq will declare that Iran is waging war against the US-backed Baghdad government.

A strong statement from General David Petraeus about Iran’s intervention in Iraq could set the stage for a US attack on Iranian military facilities, according to a Whitehall assessment. In closely watched testimony in Washington next week, Gen Petraeus will state that the Iranian threat has risen as Tehran has supplied and directed attacks by militia fighters against the Iraqi state and its US allies.

~~~

“Petraeus is going to go very hard on Iran as the source of attacks on the American effort in Iraq,” a British official said. “Iran is waging a war in Iraq. The idea that America can’t fight a war on two fronts is wrong, there can be airstrikes and other moves,” he said.

“Petraeus has put emphasis on America having to fight the battle on behalf of Iraq. In his report he can frame it in terms of our soldiers killed and diplomats dead in attacks on the Green Zone.”

Tension between Washington and Tehran is already high over Iran’s covert nuclear programme. The Bush administration has not ruled out military strikes.

In remarks interpreted as signalling a change in his approach to Iran, Gen Petraeus last week hit out at the Iranian leadership. “The rockets that were launched at the Green Zone were Iranian-provided, Iranian-made rockets,” he said. “All of this in complete violation of promises made by President Ahmadinejad and the other most senior Iranian leaders to their Iraqi counterparts.”

Just what the doctor ordered — another war in the Middle East!

If Petraeus does make the claim that Iranians were involved in the Basra fighting, it better be backed with hard evidence. Like a prisoner or a body, maybe. No torpedo boat attacks on the Maddox after Bush’s track record for phony casus belli.

I can’t wait until this dumb son of a bitch is out of office:

President George W. Bush will acknowledge on Wednesday the Iraq war has been fought at a high cost but will insist a U.S. troop buildup has opened the door to a “major strategic victory” against Islamic militants.

“The successes we are seeing in Iraq are undeniable,” Bush will say in an upbeat assessment of the U.S.-led campaign in a speech marking the fifth anniversary of the war, according to excerpts released on Tuesday.

~~~

“The surge has done more than turn the situation in Iraq around — it has opened the door to a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror,” Bush will say.

Mission fucking accomplished all over again.

Obviously, President Dumbshit hasn’t a clue about what the word “strategic” means. He invaded a country with no connection to al Qaida and its network of Islamic terrorists in order to topple a regime which was both frightened of and hostile to radical Islamists it viewed as a serious threat, and who in turn viewed Iraq’s corrupt, brutal, Baathist dictator as a heretic marked for death.

By toppling the regime and destabilizing the country and the region, Bush ignited a series of violent reactions which, according to our own National Intelligence Estimate, inspired a new series of Islamist militants and eased al Qaida’s task of recruiting more jihadists by the thousands.

Now, after an investment numbering in the trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives, the commitment of the vast majority of our military has marginally stabilized a largely failed political state in Iraq, a country which is still beset by widespread violence which can be viewed as a positive development only in light of the even more appalling levels of violence during the prior year of our occupation.

So, basically, vis a vis the Islamic militants, we’ve killed many of those our actions helped to create, we’re still militarily bogged down in Iraq, and the numbers of terrorist attacks as tallied by our own counterterrorist agencies worldwide are now measured by the tens of thousands, geometrically higher than the two hundred and eight terrorist attacks which occurred world wide in 2002, before we invaded Iraq.

So, to sum up, we’ve expended a ton of resources, turned millions of Iraqis into refugees, lost 4000 of our finest young people, and the number of terrorist attacks world wide jumped from 208 in 2002 to over 14,000 by our own last tally.

And this stupid motherfucker calls this a strategic victory?

MORE: As Bush chumbles moronically about “strategic victory” in Iraq, another strategic failure there — the latest attempt at reconciliation between warring factions is an utter failure:

A no-reconciliation conference

Influential Shiite and Sunni groups boycotted a conference on Iraqi reconciliation Tuesday, as U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney traveled north to meet with Kurdish leaders.

Members of the main Sunni Arab parliament coalition, Tawafiq, refused to attend the two-day meeting because of complaints about the Shiite-dominated government.

Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr’s bloc walked out of the conference, saying it did not want a ceremonial presence. The same went for a contingent led by Sheik Ali Hatem Sulaiman, a representative of Sunni Muslim tribes that rose up against the Sunni insurgent group Al Qaeda in Iraq.

The boycott was symptomatic of the rifts and enmity among Iraqi parties, which are organized along ethnic and religious lines and have delayed progress in power sharing between the country’s Shiite majority and the formerly ruling Sunnis.

~~~

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s government has dwindled since last summer to a core group of Shiite and Kurdish politicians. But the Shiite prime minister’s relationship with the Kurds has become strained over matters such as Iraq’s stalled oil legislation and the country’s northern boundaries.

Maliki’s detractors describe him as being hindered by an inner circle that does not like to share power and is fiercely sectarian. His supporters argue that he is trying to build a strong government and that other parties are standing in the way for selfish reasons.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Igor Volodin believes vodka is no more harmful than chocolate. He is proud to be the first Russian to produce the spirit in a special women’s version, designed to be sipped with salad after a workout in the gym.

Touted as a glamour product for upwardly mobile women in booming Russia, Damskaya or “Ladies” vodka worries doctors, who fear a fresh wave of female alcoholics in a country already suffering one of the world’s worst drink problems.

Source

Or, Tim Russert, buffoon or dupe?

First of all, hola to Martini Revolution readers. I’ve been on sabbatical, hiatus, vacation, winter break, busy doing important shit which actually pays the bills for my magnificent estate. Ashamed as I am to admit it, I have a job, of sorts, and was moving to a new office. So I haven’t had time to enlighten you with my brilliant commentary, okay? I feel bad about this, but not as bad as I would feel if my daughter’s tuition came due and I couldn’t cut a check.

But back to the topic at hand: John McCain’s de-evolution from a principled maverick into a Neocon-propaganda spewing caricature.

Juan Cole spends a bit of time deconstructing McCain’s pitiful and disingenuous attempt at a gotchya on Obama’s response to a Russert hypothetical postulating al Qaeda’s seizure of Iraq at some point in the future:

‘ MR. RUSSERT: . . . do you reserve a right as American president to go back into Iraq, once you have withdrawn, with sizable troops in order to quell any kind of insurrection or civil war?

SEN. OBAMA: . . . Now, I always reserve the right for the president — as commander in chief, I will always reserve the right to make sure that we are looking out for American interests. And if al Qaeda is forming a base in Iraq, then we will have to act in a way that secures the American homeland and our interests abroad. So that is true, I think, not just in Iraq, but that’s true in other places. That’s part of my argument with respect to Pakistan. . .’

As Cole points out, the question was a hypothetical about future events occurring after an American withdrawal from Iraq, a nuance Sen. Corkscrew blithely ignored. Cole also points out the disingenousness of Russert’s hypothetical and McCain’s premise that al Qaeda was capable of establishing or sustaining a viable regime in Iraq, or even a friendly regime similar to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Moreover, the allegation that he makes about there being ‘al-Qaeda in Iraq’ that could well take over the country is part lie and part insanity. The Sunni Arabs are no more than 20% of the Iraqi population. How could a tiny minority from within them take over the whole?

The technical definition of al-Qaeda is operatives who have sworn fealty to Usama bin Laden. There were only a few hundred of them. I doubt whether more than a handful of such individuals are in Iraq.

But McCain’s intellectual dishonesty or sheer, mind-numbing stupidity goes deeper than that, because even among Iraq’s Sunnis, Osama bin Ladin and al Qaeda are widely despised.

Polls conducted at the end of 2006 showed that:

Overall 94 percent [of Iraqis] have an unfavorable view of al Qaeda, with 82 percent expressing a very unfavorable view. Of all organizations and individuals assessed in this poll, it received the most negative ratings. The Shias and Kurds show similarly intense levels of opposition, with 95 percent and 93 percent respectively saying they have very unfavorable views.

~~~

Views of Osama bin Laden are only slightly less negative. Overall 93 percent have an unfavorable view, with 77 percent very unfavorable. Very unfavorable views are expressed by 87 percent of Kurds and 94 percent of Shias. Here again, the Sunnis are negative, but less unequivocally—71 percent have an unfavorable view (23% very), and 29 percent a favorable view (3% very).

Get that? Iraqis as a whole hate al Qaeda and Osama. And for good reason: al Qaeda views Iraq’s 80% Sunni Shia (thanks Andrew) and Kurdish populations as apostates and enemies.

But even among the 20% Sunni population which Osama might troll for support, he and his organization are mainly reviled. This is predictable, as many Iraq Sunnis were Baathists, or simply more secular than the fundamentalist al Qaeda, and also because Iraq’s Sunnis grew to resent being murdered by al Qaeda’s small contingent of foreign cutthroats and murderers. While the administration and its pro-war flacks like McCain have tried to portray the “Anbar Awakening” to the surge or increased American military activity in those regions, this is simply untrue. Sunni rejection of Al Qaeda is typically accompanied by more of a hands off approach, turning away from confrontation with Sunni groups, and arming their former enemies while giving them more autonomy and less interference from US or Iraqi Central government forces. The awakening movements have succeeded largely by lowering our profile in those areas.

As the mission in Iraq grew more costly, more bungled, and more protracted, Bush and the few remaining war pimps like McCain have struggled to put forward a rationale for the fiasco, stubborn and unwilling as they are to admit the most monumental fucking mistake in the history of American foreign policy. The rationales which were put forward before the war, destroying the phantasmagorical WMDs, and liberating a grateful population to establish a secular, pro-western democracy are, as the late William F. Buckley not, irretrievable failures.

The last resort is fear — and the attempt to tie the whole misbegotten, ill-executed Iraq failure into the meme of 9/11 and the war against terror. It may be disingenuous, and unconscionably stupid for Bush and McCain to present the war in this light, but it is all too predictable given the complete absence of remorse for ruinous decisions and utter lack of intellectual integrity. McCain, for better or worse, has saddled himself to being pro-war, and he intends to ride it into the ground.

I can’t believe this.

“My brother went to war tonight with the government,” Gerald Thornton said in an interview with a local television station after the incident. “He decided that he could no longer verbally work it out.”

More reasons:

On CNN, Mr. Thornton seemed to confirm reports that ticketing of his brother’s commercial vehicles were at the core of the dispute. Violations of his “constitutional protections” was also cited, without elaboration.

NYT

Oh, it’s time to read the news from “back home.” I’m thinking cocoa with Fluff, a nice warm fireside, snow on the trees … but NO!

Critics of the Rotenberg school say the case shows that school officials have failed to live up to their public promises to deliver electric shocks only sparingly and with great oversight.

WHAT?!

Prank led school to treat two with shock
Special ed center duped, report says

Two special education students at the controversial Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton were wrongfully delivered dozens of punishing electrical shocks in August based on a prank phone call from a former student posing as a supervisor, a state investigative report has found.

School staffers contacted state authorities after they realized they had been tricked on Aug. 26 into delivering 77 shocks to one student and 29 shocks to another, according to Cindy Campbell, a spokeswoman for the Department of Early Education and Care, which drafted the report. Both students were part of a Rotenberg-run group home in Stoughton for males under age 22.

The Judge Rotenberg center, which serves about 250 adults and children from across the country, has been under fire for more than two decades for its unorthodox behavior-modification treatments, including electric shock treatments. Its defenders say that the school takes in troubled students, some with self-damaging behavior, who have been rejected by other schools. The center, which Massachusetts officials have tried twice to close because of its treatment methods, focuses on serving people with autism, mental retardation, and emotional problems. Ernest Corrigan, a spokesman for the Rotenberg center, said the school contacted law enforcement “within hours” after discovering the prank, and that such an incident has never before happened at the school. Corrigan said they have instituted new safeguards to prevent such occurrences. He also said that while the school regrets the incident, the two male students who received the wrongful shocks did not experience any serious physical harm and did not need medical treatment afterwards.

The shock devices, which are strapped to some students’ arms, legs, or torsos, deliver two-second electric jolts to the skin. The devices are controlled remotely by teachers.

State officials said the identity of the prankster is known to law enforcement authorities, but they would not release his name publicly and he has not been arrested. The identity of the staffer who was fooled into administering the shocks has also not been released. State officials indicated that some disciplinary action took place, though they would not specify what it was.

Source

SEPARATED AT BIRTH?

You gotta hand it to the boys and girls at the National Review. After 5 years of pimping a failed war and an imbecilic presidency, they’ve endorsed a candidate who, in terms of sheer guts and personal fortitude, makes the incredible Mr. Limpet look like Vince Lombardi.

And the endorsement is a ringing one, too:

Each of the men running for the Republican nomination has strengths, and none has everything — all the traits, all the positions — we are looking for. . . . It is true that he has less foreign-policy experience than Thompson [ed: he's the really lazy one, in case you forgot] . . . . It is true that he has reversed some of his positions. . . . Romney has been plagued by the sense that his is a passionless, paint-by-the-numbers conservatism. . . . In this most fluid and unpredictable Republican field, we vote for Mitt Romney.

Vote for Romney — he’s likely better than a dose of clap.

More: Great minds, and all that.

The Problem:

1 day before Meeting <1.1> I received and email and voice mail from a scheduled artist in regards to having to cancel his upcoming art exhibition and that he was giving up art.

CLICK TO READ THE EMAIL

The Solution:
Invite 33 artists to discuss why an artist would cancel an upcoming exhibition and give up art because he/she believed Jesus told them too.

The response by artists to commit on such short notice to take part in this exhibition is amazing and we’re honored to have so many amazing new and emerging talents from such movements as:
Neo-Existential & Dramatic Realism

Gallery Artist Reps:

Ryan Pratt
Ken Garduno
Gale Hart
Greg Lukens
Kevin E. Taylor
Barry Wolfryd
Chris Peters
John Casey
Darren Breen
Derek Weisberg
Patrick Marraso
Zoso
Martin Wittfooth
James Kirkpatrick
Danny Heller
Paul Torres
Alex Garcia

Guest Reps:

Mark Gonzales
Vonn Sumner
Paul Barnes
Eric Shaw
Josh Taylor
Matt Rota
Max Micelli
Holly Wood
Thomas Hurley 3
Baruch Inbar
Daniel Lara
Shannon Freshwater
Pee Monster

Creative Design by: Visual Narcotics 20mg

Each Artist is available for interviews; please contact:

Daniel at info@theconfroom.com for scheduling and tear sheets

The Conference Room Gallery
325 S. Robertson Blvd.
Beverly Hills, CA 90211

As Glenn Greenwald puts it:

If there is a place with more abject stupidity swirling around than the right-wing blogosphere, I’d like to know where it is.

Yesterday, Greenwald wrote a lengthy post about an email he received from Col. Steven A. Boylan, General Petraeus’s spokesman and Public Affairs Officer, which is a saga in itself, since the Officer subsequently denied writing the email in a somewhat bizarre and weaselprickish fashion.

In his post Greenwald quoted from the email at length, specifically noting the portions quoted were excerpts only, and separately linked the full text of the email.

One might think that such full disclosure would insulate Greenwald from allegations of duplicity, but for the fact that some even dumber than usual Right Wing Hack calling himself “Dread Pundit” accuses him of “[choosing] not to publish” the email in its entirety, and somehow concealing the non-bizarre portions.

But no. And naturally, the other inhabitants of the Dumb-O-Sphere pile on, like brain-damaged lemmings pouring over the cliffs of stupidity.

Forget that the email, in its entirety, is still bizarre — especially since the Colonel now apparently denies sending it. And nothing in the email would indicate that it was anything other than “unsolicited.” Greenwald made the entire thing available to his readers.

Just when one thinks Right Blogostan has reached absolute stupid, it goes even lower. We just have to hope it doesn’t someday reach the ice-nine of Stupid.