Thank you, Maureen Dowd
… for a memorable and entirely spot on dressing down of the presidential puppeteer, Dick Cheney. The whole NYT article entitled ‘Daffy Does Doom‘ is worth reading, but I’ve excerpted it here:
Dick Durbin went to the floor of the Senate on Thursday night to denounce the vice president as “delusional.”
It was shocking, and Senator Durbin should be ashamed of himself.
Delusional is far too mild a word to describe Dick Cheney. Delusional doesn’t begin to capture the profound, transcendental one-flew-over daftness of the man.
Has anyone in the history of the United States ever been so singularly wrong and misguided about such phenomenally important events and continued to insist he’s right in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary?
It requires an exquisite kind of lunacy to spend hundreds of billions destroying America’s reputation in the world, exhausting the U.S. military, failing to catch Osama, enhancing Iran’s power in the Middle East and sending American kids to train and arm Iraqi forces so they can work against American interests.
Only someone with an inspired alienation from reality could, under the guise of exorcising the trauma of Vietnam, replicate the trauma of Vietnam.
You must have a real talent for derangement to stay wrong every step of the way, to remain in complete denial about Iraq’s civil war, to have a total misunderstanding of Arab culture, to be completely oblivious to the American mood and to be absolutely blind to how democracy works.
… He sees himself as a prophet in the wilderness because he thinks anyone in the wilderness must be a prophet.
To borrow one of his many dismissive words, it’s hogwash.
Quite. And let us not forget it was the Chimperor’s puppeteer that rejected peace talks with and concessions offered by the Iranians. No siree, he wants war.
Meanwhile, whilst the NYT offers up this brief article that speaks truth to power (though subscriber only – Times Select) on the one hand, the beating up of Iran’s purported role in Iraq has begun disgracefully on the other, with this article on front page – Iranian Reveals Plan to Expand Role in Iraq:
Iran’s ambassador to Baghdad outlined an ambitious plan on Sunday to greatly expand its economic and military ties with Iraq — including an Iranian national bank branch in the heart of the capital — that will almost certainly bring Iran into further conflict with American forces who have detained a number of Iranian operatives here in recent weeks.
Read the rest here
Also on a more sobering note, the Guardian reports that Israel is trying to cut Iran off from world markets, while Y-Net predictably demonizes Hezbollah and Hamas as well as Iran in Bush’s backdoor attack: Iran via Hizbullah, and features an article centred around former Mossad chief Halevy’s remarks that WWIII have already begun — charming.
From the Guardian:
Israel is launching a campaign to isolate Iran economically and to soften up world opinion for the option of a military strike aimed at crippling or delaying Tehran’s uranium enrichment programme.Pressure will be applied to major US pension funds to stop investment in about 70 companies that trade directly with Iran, and to international banks that trade with its oil sector, cutting off the country’s access to hard currency. The aim is to isolate Tehran from the world markets in a campaign similar to that against South Africa at the height of apartheid. [What a laugh—I know I’ll be boycotting the state whose practises are worse than, let alone comparable to, apartheid: Israel]
Meanwhile, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to be pursued in international courts for calling the Holocaust a myth, and saying Israel should be wiped off the map. [demonstrably rubbish] The case will be launched under the 1948 UN convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide, which outlaws “direct and public incitement to genocide”. [“incitement” to genocide, how exactly? Funny, Iran’s 40,000 Persian Jews are quite happy in Iran]
Before flying to London to spearhead the mission to sell the sanctions, the Likud party leader, Binyamin Netanyahu, said: “A campaign to divest commercial investment from Iran, beginning with the large pension funds in the west … either stops Iran’s nuclear programme or it will pave the way for tougher actions. So it’s no-lose for us.” [No, ‘Bibi’, dangerous delusional moron, it’s just LOSE for all of us, the whole world]
And a possible conflagration was also on the Davos agenda, as reported by Business Week:
At a morning session devoted to the Middle East, and run by prominent business and political figures from the region, an agenda devoted to the broad topics of peaceful reform was quickly overshadowed by the idea that the Bush Administration would start a war against the mullah-dominated regime of Tehran. The discussants seemed convinced President George Bush would try to checkmate Iran’s hegemonic ambitions and snuff out a nascent military nuclear program. The feeling was that Bush, with little to lose politically, would unleash an attack in a final gambit to reverse America’s declining fortune in the Middle East.
Curious – the second time in a day I’ve seen the gambling metaphor deployed to describe this action. The stakes are high, Mr Bush, and your odds of winning are oh so low. Don’t do it, don’t gamble with our lives.
Fresh out of mock and deride tonight PPGG, so how about I toss some cartoon ammunition into the fire? Hopefully they’re related but you’re the decider – er – decision maker.
Related Cheney toon by Sandy Huffaker.
Typical MSM helping Israel get the message propaganda out. Terra Terra Terra.
Thanks for offering the comic relief, Serv. Out of the three, the one that elicited a bit of a guffaw was the ‘Madam Cheney’ — the other two were too sad, I have to say. Can I scream now?
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHH …………
That’s a bit better.
Just a bit ;)
Dear PPGG
Dropping by just to wish you a HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
Yes people do talk in the blogosphere :)
May you have many many happy years to come, and shall we celebrate each of them together among less and less gloomy news!
Thanks very much Homie! I thought I felt my ears go red ;) Really appreciate your good wishes and your sentiments about the future.