Surrealpolitik: By Sidney Blumenthal - Facts Be Damned

Surrealpolitik
Ron Suskind's latest book offers new details about how the Bush White House has used theological certainty to mask political expediency -- facts be damned.

By Sidney Blumenthal

June 22, 2006 | On the night of June 12, shortly after Karl Rove received an e-mail from his attorney, Robert Luskin, informing him he would not be indicted by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, the president's chief political advisor appeared before a New Hampshire Republican Party group to deliver a call to arms for the midterm elections. Rove defined the theme for the upcoming contest, the last one of the Bush presidency, as the same one he had set after Sept. 11, 2001, when he ordered Republicans to polarize the country on the issue of terrorism and war. Democrats were weak and soft, he said; Republicans, strong and tough. Now, with Bush's popularity at low ebb, Rove instructed the party to taint the Democrats as favoring "cutting and running" in Iraq.

The following week, on cue, the Republicans introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives against any "timetable" for a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Overnight the divided and dispirited Republicans turned the tables on the Democrats. Even as the Democrats issued a program calling for a "new direction," their own version of the 1994 Republican Contract With America, which carefully did not mention Iraq, they scattered in different directions upon mention of the war. Instilling discipline in their ranks would be a forbidding task even for a pack leader like Cesar Millan, the "dog whisperer." It was just as Rove had reckoned.

....................

On June 14, the Pentagon dispatched a document titled "Iraq Floor Debate Prep Book" to Republicans in the House. A Pentagon public affairs officer admitted to the Washington Post that the 74-page document originated in the White House but was repackaged as a Pentagon publication. It is a cut-and-paste rush job to refute advocates of "cut and run." It is also a representative document of the Bush administration: Evidence is cherry-picked, slogans substitute for facts, falsehoods are sold as truth, and "victory" is promised. Connections between al-Qaida and Iraq are slyly hinted at. The old accusations against Jose Padilla as the "dirty bomber," no longer being pressed against him, reappear. The Pentagon document, eagerly seized upon by congressional Republicans as a treasure trove of talking points, accurately gauges the White House's estimate of their ability to assess information on their own.

..................

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2006/06/22/iraq_debate/index.html

:kick:

The Dems are just so fucking ineffective these days, it's depressing.

"A treasure trove of talking points..."

:puke:

I know, I know the media is complicit but we just have to come up with our own ways to reach Joe and Jane Sixpack.

H2OMan has some suggestions for LTTE activism on the Dick Cheney picnic thread but I'm not so sure that method would work for the average Joe who probably doesn't read the paper, much. The repukes are relying upon the fear card AGAIN dammit. Yup, it is "just as Rove reckoned."

You want endless war? Trust Bushite electronic voting corporations to 'count' all the votes with 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code and virtually no audit/recount controls.

It's a no-brainer. Compliments of the biggest crooks in the Anthrax Congress, Tom Delay and Bob Ney, and their infamous "Help America Vote for Bush Act."

Don't despair. The problem is right down the street at your local Board of Elections and County Registrar offices. Demand that they restore TRANSPARENT elections! And vote by Absentee Ballot as a protest against their goddamned election theft machines, and to make a tangible record of your vote for election investigators. If enough people do it (and many are), the machines will be obsolete; then we can work on getting rid of the central electronic vote tabulators.

American Revolution II: Transparent, verfiiable elections!