Both Kevin Drum and Spencer Ackerman point out that various ninnies on the Right are attacking Obama for noting that many of the positive developments now attributed to teh Surge by McCain and other Iraq War enthusiasts in fact appear to have occurred not only separately and independently from the Surge, but also months before the Surge strategy was announced and even longer before it was embarked upon. Responding to NRO Obersttwit Andy McCarthy’s comment:

Does Obama think the Sunni Awakening and the Shia militia stand-down are somehow separate developments from the surge and the brilliant performance of American forces? If he really thinks that, it’s dumb.

Drum answers:

* February 2006: Muqtada al-Sadr orders an end to execution-style killings by Mahdi Army death squads.

* August 2006: Sadr announces a broad ceasefire, which he has maintained ever since.

* September 2006: The Sunni Awakening begins. Tribal leaders, first in Anbar and later in other provinces, start fighting back against al-Qaeda insurgents.

* March 2007: The surge begins.

Say what you will about the surge, which does indeed deserve a share of the credit for reducing violence and increasing security in Baghdad. But it pretty obviously wasn’t related to either the Shia militia stand-down or the Sunni Awakening, since both those things began before Petraeus took over in Iraq and before the surge was even a gleam in George Bush’s eye.

Responding to Presumptive Republican Nominee and non-geographer John McCain’s fatuous attack on Obama claiming that:

I don’t know how you respond to something that is as– such a false depiction of what actually happened. Colonel McFarlane [phonetic] was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks. Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that’s just a matter of history.

Ackerman points out that Colonel McFarland himself was explaining the success of the Anbar Awakening to Pam Hess of the UPI in September of 2006, several months before teh Surge was announced by Bush:

I think al Qaeda has been pushed up against the ropes by this, and now they’re finding themselves trapped between the coalition and ISF on the one side, and the people on the other.

Leading Ackerman to conclude:

For McCain to say that the Anbar Awakening is the product of the surge is either a lie or professional malpractice for a presidential candidate who is staking his election on his allegedly superior Iraq judgment.

I’m voting for the fuck up rather than the lie, personally.

Unless it can be demonstrated that teh Surge is so magic it can go back in time and cause the Anbar Sheiks to shift their allegiances, coerce Sadr to reign his militias, and then declare a ceasefire.

In which case I want teh Surge to go back in time again and put $100,000 on the Giants to win the Super Bowl, before the season started.

DoughBob Loadpants: The day after his execrably stupid column asking whether Obama’s call for national service was not equivalent to a call for slavery, can-only-aspire-to-moron-status NRO nepotism exhibit Jonah Goldberg has the temerity to ask whether Obama is “Dishonest or Stupid?”

Why? Because in his view, bilingualism has nothing “to do with the importance of teaching kids a second language” and anyone who things that bilingualism is connected to learning a second language has no idea what he’s talking about.

Pantload, meet Mr. Webster:

Main Entry:
bi·lin·gual·ism
Pronunciation:
\-gwə-ˌli-zəm\
Function:
noun
Date:
1873

1 : the ability to speak two languages 2 : the frequent use (as by a community) of two languages 3 : the political or institutional recognition of two languages

But then again, Jonah’s primary vocation for the past few years has been the exhibition of stupidity to grotesque excess.

Although Jonah’s fact-challenged and intellectually-stunted writing often raises the question “stupid or dishonest” reflection on his past works pretty quickly leads to one conclusion: it’s the stupid.

Um, no. Not really.

But while we’re on the subject, batshit-crazy NRO-welfare recipient K-Lo opines:

A totally crazy Saturday-morning thought: Wouldn’t George W. Bush make an awesome high-school government teacher?

Once again, K-Lo is guilty of epic understatment when she describes this particular synaptic phenomena (which she mistakenly describes as “thought”) as “totally crazy.”

Pattycakes is upset because others aren’t grieving over the death of vicious, unrepentant, racist assholes he admires:

P.S. I firmly believe “TBogg” wouldn’t be this happy if the dead man were Osama bin Laden, instead of Jesse Helms.

P.S.: I firmly believe that Patterico is a vapid, soulless cocksucker who breathes new meaning into Samuel Johnson’s old saying, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”

Of course, if I’m wrong, it’s easily proven. All you need to do is dig up all his old posts denouncing vapid, soulless douchebag cocksuckers who hijack patriotism like a methed-out wise guy to use it like a cudgel.

Of course Patterico, being the disingenuous prick that he is, ignored the prefatory quotes to TBogg’s eulogy:

“The University of Negroes and Communists” - Jesse Helms 1950

“They should ask their parents if it would be all right for their son or daughter to marry a Negro.” - Jesse Helms 1968

( …but he wasn’t a racist )

“The New York Times and Washington Post are both infested with homosexuals themselves. Just about every person down there is a homosexual or lesbian.” - Jesse Helms 1995

“Homosexuals are weak, morally sick wretches.” - Jesse Helms 1995

“Your tax dollars are being used to pay for grade-school classes that teach our children that CANNIBALISM, WIFE-SWAPPING and MURDER of infants and the elderly are acceptable behavior.” - Jesse Helms 1996

Confronted with evidence that D’Aubuisson directed death squads to murder civilians, Helms made it clear that some things are more important than human life. “All I know,” he replied, “is that D’Aubuisson is a free enterprise man and deeply religious.”

Assholes like Patterico are deeply averse to context, aren’t they?

Scott adds:

The symbols that stick most prominently in my mind are his use of the blue slip to prevent the integration of the Fourth Circuit and “whistling ‘Dixie’ while standing next to Senator Carol Moseley-Braun.

Just the kind of spirited racist scumbaggery that tugs at a faux-patriot’s heart.

K-Lo, all wound up crazy with nowhere to go:

I may be crazy. But Bill Clinton is not going to let himself be humiliated. He’s in talks with McCain before long if he’s not already. He’s going to salvage his name before this election is over.

If K-Lo thinks Bill Clinton is going to press his lips against John McCain’s angry ass and give him the kind of hug-and-blow-job McCain gave to Bush 8 and then 4 years ago, “crazy” doesn’t even begin to describe her.

Talk about “humiliation.” Clinton kissing McCain’s hand would be a humiliation worthy of the “Gimp” from Pulp Fiction.

A batshit crazy like Michelle Malkin could say something this asinine:

Anthony Kennedy and the leftists on the Supreme Court ruled. . .

Yes all those “leftists” on the Supreme Court, 7 of whom were appointed by known Pinko Bastards like Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and The Decider himself.

Trainwreck Media lead dumbkopf Roger Simon:

Whatever one thinks about the neocons, they had virtually the only program, the only idea of how to right the world after 9/11.

Me:

If they have such a program of how to right the world, as Simon claims, it’s about time they tell us what it is, and try to implement it in place of the humongous clusterfuck of death, incompetence, and costly ruin they’ve inflicted on the US and the world the last 7 years.

My suspicion, however it that the program of how to right the world about which Simon speaks is every bit as imaginary as the non-existent Iraqi WMDs Roger claimed was transported through the mythical tunnels into Syria with the help of the Russians.

Via Instaputz.

His most recent embarrassment to the LA Times:

All Government is just like catering food.

Especially if you’re a bloated, fat-headed, thick-waisted dullard who thinks with your stomach.

The concept that government might excel in some areas, and private industry in others, apparently requires too much intellectual wattage for the Pantload.

The invasion of Iraq has destabilized Iraq and brought Shiite political parties with long and close ties to Iran into power in Iraq, while destroying the power of the Sunni and Baathist enemies of Iran. So all in all, it’s worked out pretty well for the mullahs, but was this awful result mere serendipity?

Did Iranian agents dupe Pentagon officials?

WASHINGTON — Defense Department counterintelligence investigators suspected that Iranian exiles who provided dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran to a small group of Pentagon officials might have “been used as agents of a foreign intelligence service … to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government,” a Senate Intelligence Committee report said Thursday.

A top aide to then-secretary of defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, however, shut down the 2003 investigation into the Pentagon officials’ activities after only a month, and the Defense Department’s top brass never followed up on the investigators’ recommendation for a more thorough investigation, the Senate report said.

The revelation raises questions about whether Iran may have used a small cabal of officials in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office to feed bogus intelligence on Iraq and Iran to senior policymakers in the Bush administration who were eager to oust the Iraqi dictator.

Iran, which was a mortal enemy of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and fought a bloody eight-year war with Iraq during his reign, has been the primary beneficiary of U.S. policy in Iraq, where Iranian-backed groups now run much of the government and the security forces.

This follows the classic pattern of the Bush administration: the fuck-up (being the stooge of a foreign intel op) followed by the cover-up (killing the investigation into the matter).

Front and center as the witless conduits of foreign intelligence efforts are the familiar names of two of the leading dimbulb warpimps responsible for pushing the Iraq invasion:

According to the report, Ledeen, however, persisted, presenting then-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith with a new 100-day plan to provide, among other things, evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that supposedly had been moved to Iran — Saddam Hussein’s archenemy.

Ledeen, who regularly receives foot massages from Trainwreck’s Roger Simon, was really on top of things, though:

When the CIA and the State Department discovered that Ledeen and Ghorbanifar were involved, they opposed any further contact with the two. Ledeen’s contacts, the Defense Human Intelligence Service concluded, were “nefarious and unreliable,” the Senate committee reported.

Bear this in mind the next time Ledeen advocates nuclear strikes on Iran.

The name Ahmed Chalabi should fit into this story. Chalabi was the Iraqi exile who was promoted by the Neocon numbnuts at the Project for a New American Century (Bill Kristol’s intellectual sewer) as Iraq’s George Washington. As I write today, I find the PNAC’s website reads:
“This Account Has Been Suspended
Please contact the billing/support department as soon as possible,”
but the site once contained the PNAC’s lengthy hagiography of Chalabi, and an homage to his integrity and the value of his intelligence apparatus.

Of course, this was before it was determined that the information Chalabi provided to gullible neocon warhawks was purposely false and misleading, based on unreliable (and often drunken) sources, before Chalabi was accused of spying for Iran, and before Chalabi’s most recent notoriety, when earlier this month he was fired from his government post due to “his murky ties to Iran, including leaders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the country’s internal security force.” An earlier Salon.com piece on “How Ahmed Chalabi Conned the Neocons” touched upon both Chalabi’s influence with the PNAC hawks who steered administration towards invading Iraq, and his ties with Iran’s leadership. A money quote: “”Ahmed Chalabi is a treacherous, spineless turncoat,” from former ally Marc Zell.

Bellicose, feckless and duped is no way to run our foreign policy.

Trainwreck Media Mogul Roger L. Simon in a crappy screenplay starring himself as Nostradamus:

Twenty years from now Bush will be seen as one of the great presidents, having moved the Middle East toward democracy.

But El Raj neglects to tell us: will he still have a grand square in Baghdad named after him, like fellow neocon Richard Perle predicted in 2003 (”The problems in Iraq are ahead of us, but we’re doing better than people think. And a year from now, I’ll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush“) and repeated in 2005?

Of course, Simon’s record on Iraq prognostication to date is not very good, being the same guy who predicted that the WMDs which the Duelfer report conclusively determined had been destroyed would turn up after being hidden by the Rooskies or the Syrians.

Via instaputz.