The daring assault, a few miles from the capital, was the third significant terrorist attack in Pakistan this a week. A suicide bomb attack on a UN headquarters killed five, and more than fifty people died when a huge car bomb exploded in a bazaar in the city of Peshawar.
Saturday’s attack seemed intended to show that the Taliban can still strike at the very heart of Pakistan’s security apparatus despite recent military operations against their forces and the killing of Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud in a drone attack in August.
The attackers may have been trying to kill army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who was inside the complex on Saturday, although it was not clear whether he was there during the attack. Military statements said he attended meetings there and at the president’s office in nearby Islamabad during the day.
It’s as if the so-called Pakistan Taliban, campers unhappy with the feebly pro-Western central government, don’t want the Yankees to go home after all.
For it’s the best guess, stateside, that this week’s attacks will support Pentagon and CIA warmakers in their recently convened public debate with the White House — especially if the Paki Army now throws up its hands and shouts to Stanley McChrystal across the border, Heck, come on down and we’ll kick some rebel ass!
The government said the assault on the headquarters …had strengthened its resolve to push into South Wazristan — a mountainous region where security forces have been beaten back by insurgents before.
The spasm of violence was confirmation that the militants had regrouped despite recent military operations against their forces and the killing of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud in a CIA drone attack in August. His replacement vowed just last week to step up attacks around the country and repel any push into Waziristan.
Sounds like something that could snowball into the party war I’d imagined was in the works last December when erstwhile CIA Director General Michael Hayden declared war on/in Pakistan.
Perhaps this week’s attacks are expressions of native alienation from Islamabad pure and simple, and nothing more.
Or perhaps there’s bona fide provocation at work, maybe by American warmakers looking to win the debate and close the deal, or merely by Moscow, smiling on the sidelines like a Cheshire cat as it arms the resistance, turnabout being fair play and revenge a dish best served cold.
It may be worth recalling: Bush-Cheney called Mullah Omar and his merry band on the carpet in January and (if memory serves) May of 2001 — trying to get them to work with Houston’s Unocal on the Caspian basin pipeline, rather than Argentina’s Bridas.
But Omar grew sullen. And in midsummer (as voices from Tony Blair’s gov’t have reported) Bush-Cheney told the NATO folk to saddle up for the ride into Kabul.
It seems fair, then, to say that we did not go to Afghanistan to Get Osama. Our reasons for remaining there remain obscure. No good reasons are evident.
If this week’s attacks are native affairs, let the Paki apparatus, half of which hates Uncle Sam’s guts, handle them.
And if the attacks are more than meets the eye? Then all the better for the American President to resist the mousetrap cheese.
Neither the various forces labelled Taliban nor the meeting of minds referred to as al Qaeda are things a Pentagon can dismantle. Wars on terror are won or lost largely between the ears.
Obama knows this. Evidence: The Cairo and recent UN speeches. That he initiated the current public debate — saying Woah on a Sunday talk show — remains hopeful.
But whether he has the power and the nerve to turn off the Aimless war he cheerleaded and then inherited is far from clear.
He strode during the campaign last year, smiling and waving, into a near perfect trap, like Jesus entering Jerusalem on his ass. There are certainly elements of tragedy in this, but also of Obama’s particular great-souled naivete.
Hillary (whom I also admire) was the one to feed to this sausage grinder. She was ready for battle and knows how to take a bullet. Romney seems a good bet to be president four years hence: a time and place I don’t want to be.
As surmised last Sunday, it was a bad week for the greenback and good for gold and other precious commodities.
Gold rocketed to a new high circa $1,060 and settled on Friday about $1,045.
The dollar dived then bounced a bit. Still roughly $1.47 to the euro.
Many commentators sense the Europeans won’t let the euro climb much more any time soon.
If so, we may be approaching the end of the dollar’s slide for this cycle, and that would likely temper gold’s ardor and, to a degree, that of the stock markets.
Ie, the dollar turning up against other major currencies would almost surely hurt gold a bit, and would pressure the stock of corporations that sell alot of stuff overseas, and to a degree US stocks in general (as dollar-denominated assets) as a mere matter of exchange.
But where precisely the turn shall be … What do you think?
Thats the DXY index for the past 18 months or so, measuring the dollar against six other currencies.
Does it look like it’s done going down? That 72 level still seems to beckon. But perhaps not now …
( The DXY is weighted this way: Euro 57.6%, Yen 13.6, Brit Pound 11.9, Canadian Loonie 9.1, Swedish Krona 4.2 and Swiss Franc 3.6. )
2. LIKE I CARE
Maybe us Net Debtors shouldn’t care — indeed, should applaud the dollar’s drowse.
“The Washington theory is that dollar weakness will benefit the U.S. by inflating our way out of debt and causing more exports,” Encima’s Malpass said in a Sept. 25 note to clients. “The problem with this theory is that it assumes capital stays put while the dollar devalues.”
There’s the rub.
When capital begins to flee … You have Argentina, 2001: Not only do Asian bankers stop investing, but eventually the domestic rich move their money to Switzerland (or Uruguay), leaving the domestic banks to get run on and close.
Those not footloose enough to flee get f#%*$d. Lose (access to) their money. Default on their mortgages — and then the banks (perhaps yet shuttered) take the real estate.
The editor of a Buenos Aires daily walked me through this in 2006, in painful detail. Citibank, he said, owned a good deal of Buenos Aires at that point, having foreclosed en masse on the middle class during the bank closures of 2001-02.
It can certainly happen here. The FDIC was about broke a few weeks ago. And after dishing out hundreds of billions to the big banks last year, nobody in D.C. seemed able to come up with the $10 billion the FDIC held out its hat for. Geithner should never have been hired.
If it were to happen here, our plastic Rugged Individualist society would … Well.
Indeed, something’s happening here (same article says) already in the New American Century:
The dollar’s 15 percent decline against the euro and 11 percent depreciation versus the yen since early March are increasing concern among world leaders. At the same time, Americans are getting poorer.
Per capita net wealth tumbled to $172,749 in August from a peak of $212,599 in September 2007, government figures show.
A United Nations Human Development Report released Oct. 5 showed America’s quality of life dropped to No. 13 in a 2007 global ranking from No. 5 in 2000.
The last refers to the UN Human Development agency’s global 2009 report, which contains its annual Human Development Index:
1. Norway 0.971 No change
2. Australia 0.970 No change
3. Iceland 0.969 No change
4. Canada 0.966 No change
5. Ireland 0.965 No change
6. Netherlands 0.964 Up 1
7. Sweden 0.963 Down 1
8. France 0.961 Up 33
9. Switzerland 0.960 No change
tie Japan 0.960 No change
tie Luxembourg 0.960 Down 3
12. Finland 0.959 Up 1
13. United States 0.956 Down 1
14. Austria 0.955
15. Spain 0.955
16. Denmark 0.955
17. Belgium 0.953
18. Italy 0.951
19. Liechtenstein 0.951
20. New Zealand 0.950
21. United Kingdom 0.947
22. Germany 0.947
23. Singapore 0.944
24. Hong Kong 0.944
25. Greece 0.942
26. South Korea 0.937
27. Israel 0.935
28. Andorra 0.934
29. Slovenia 0.929
30. Brunei 0.920
31. Kuwait 0.916
32. Cyprus 0.914
33. Qatar 0.910
34. Portugal 0.909
35. United Arab Emirates 0.903
36. Czech Republic 0.903
37. Barbados 0.903
38. Malta 0.902
The Nobel folks have of course been awarding prizes proactively, as it were, for many years now — trying to shape attitudes, rather than recognizing crowning achievement.
But mightn’t the Nobelvolkers have kept their powder dry? For a rainier day? Perhaps it’s raining harder than we suppose.
Or is the odd timing of the award its very essence? Is it meant as much as anything as a rejection of Bush-Cheney unilateralism, and of the megalomaniacal militarism of the manifesto published by his PNAC wonkers in September 2000 (which months later became the basis of US foreign policy)?
In this light, the new President is merely the parchment upon which the Nobel message has been written.
However that all may be, it’s certainly an embarrassment of moral riches for Obama, and one that creates all sorts of local disturbances — when what he really needs is an army to help muscle the Apparat on policy.
Camus, too, was embarrassed to receive the honor at a rather young age, when he thought so many elder writers more deserving.
Perhaps, to begin, the Prez should review Camus’s acceptance speech for pointers on how to graciously take home the prize.
And then look to Churchill, who was also a touch embarrassed (just a touch) to get his Literature prize, re how to hit Apparatchiks on the head and make generals behave.
Nevertheless there’s value — during these weeks when the Pakghanistan policy hangs in the balance — in his assessment of the President and the Pentagon.
When he compares Obama to his old friend Jack Kennedy, he shakes his head.
“He’s twice the intellectual that Jack was, but Jack knew the great world. Remember he spent a long time in the navy, losing ships. This kid [Obama] has never heard a gun fired in anger. He’s absolutely bowled over by generals, who tell him lies and he believes them.
He hasn’t done anything. … You have to go by what people tell you. He’s like that. He’s not ready for prime time and he’s getting a lot of prime time on his plate at once.”
Very much my worry during the interregnum last year, when it became clear that Obama would retain the Bush-Cheney Pentagon leadership in its entirety.
It’s been a slippery slope since the spring of 2008, when Obama, the apparent Democratic candidate, was briefed by the Apparat on Pakghanistan and (like McCain) responded, “Sure, anything you guys say.”
He might have said No then, rejecting the Briefers (which is hard to do and dangerous if done).
‘We’re getting out of Afghanistan if I’m elected!’ he might have told the crowds all summer. But it would have been harder to be elected. He chose to go along.
Next Opportunity: Post election. The best opportunity. And the way to seize it was to replace the uniformed leadership atop the Pentagon, perhaps retaining Gates as Secy of Defense.
Next Opportunity: The “thorough review” of the policy in January and February — out of which the President dashed cheerleading Petraeus’s Pakghanistan Surge like it was summertime 2008.
Even when Europe and NATO greeted the roadshow with lip service while setting Stausbourg aflame, the President would not be swayed from pledged loyalty.
As a result, 2009 has been the costliest year (in US lives) of the eight-year war.
NS Advisor James Jones, once a general, is against the Surge.
Secy of Defense Gates is not speaking in support of the Surge.
Former everything Colin Powell is agin it.
Joe Biden (whom I respect on foreign affairs and constitutional law) is agin it, even if he betrays Kennedy-like hope in focused “counterinsurgency” ops. Rahm Emanuel is agin it. And Biden has a lot of influential pals in the Senate agin it, starting with John Kerry atop the Foreign Relations committee.
The President should take Kerry’s words to heart, and then gird his loins like a wrestler:
“John Kerry, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said after the meeting that “it would be irresponsible” to send more troops until it became clear “what is possible in Afghanistan.”
The Persians of Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes. Alexander the Great. The early modern Brits. The Soviet Union. Everybody knows what’s possible in Afghanistan. Desultory defeat.
No one has voiced in public a coherent War Aim. Neither the various forces labelled Taliban nor the meeting of minds labelled Al Qaeda can be defeated with guns. The War on Terror is a propaganda war. Trying to win it with guns enhances the enemy’s power.
Obama in his heart knows this. The Cairo speech and his September UN speech.
What he has lacked is precisely what Gore Vidal points to: The wherewithal to get from what he knows in his heart to an effective policy.
This is the last opportunity to get out without losing a second term. Surge another 40,000 troops, tell the Pentagon to Go Get’m, and the resultant gorey mess will leave the next election to Romney.
The dice have been rolling about the table for two weeks now. If the current debate ends in a decision to send more troops, then Obama has backed down and the future is clear.
If it ends otherwise, then a turn has been accomplished, and the future’s a mist.
Mist is the best the President can hope for at the moment, after endorsing for eighteen months an Aimless war.
Engineer friend Eric Douglas, who penned a definitive rejection of the National Institute of Standards & Techonology’s best-guess-within-prescribed-limits as to how/why the Twin Towers collapsed on 9/11/01 …
Yes, that Eric Douglas writes that he has received a lot of photos from NIST under an FOIA request, and supplies this link thereto.
NIST was the federal agency tasked to explain the exceedingly odd collapses of 9/11. Eric’s December 2006 critique of their report on WTC 1 and 2 (the towers) may be found at the Journal for 9/11 Studies.
In a nutshell:
– NIST did not address the question: How did the towers collapse?
Rather: What’s the best Likely Story that may be assembled as to how an airliner strike could cause a Twin Tower collapse?
– NIST did not “substantiate its conclusions experimentally. On the contrary, many of NIST’s tests contradicted its conclusions …”
– “There are several examples where NIST chose to manipulate input data, and then certify its findings based on inevitable conclusions that derive from the manipulated data.”
– “There were also flaws in NIST’s computer simulations …”
And more.
After dismantling the NIST positive argument, such as it is, Eric then appends a long list of items of evidence that contradict that positive argument.
Masterfully done. And Eric, of course, is not alone.
Everybody should read his analysis — and then think again about current arguments for escalating the apparently Aimless war in Pakghanistan.
Zheeesh, when I surmised over the weekend that the dollar might “abruptly” sag, I had no guess about the two things pounding it this morning.
1. Diversifying the near-global business of selling oil in dollars has been talked about for years.
According to The Independent’s top mideast correspondent this morning, Robert Fisk, based in Beirut, something concrete has been agreed to, to kick in across nine years. He cites banking sources in the Persian Gulf and Hong Kong.
In reaction: a rash of news stories quoting finance ministers saying “Stuff and nonsense!” Quite a media teapot tempest …
2. The Austrailian central bank also surprised, everybody, by raising its interbank rate overnight (from 3 to 3.25%) — the first major-currency CB to do so since the crisis kicked in.
These two items have the dollar reeling and gold rocketing to new highs — $1043 last I looked.
In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading
By Robert Fisk
Tuesday, 6 October 2009
In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.
Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars.
The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets within nine years.
Ed Note: See comments below into 2011 as the whirling Credit Crisis brings the European Union and its currency to the brink of … Rescission? Dissolution? One might hope.
Well. Ireland has voted 67-33 in a referendum to ratify the Lisbon Treaty, which would pretty much create a United States of Europe centrally governed by the EU apparatus in Brussels.
It seems to me a sad day, despite a recent half-apology for dem Bilderbergers.
Last year, of course, the Irish rejected the treaty/constituiton, drawing the ire of the continental powers. This time around, the Times story suggests, fear born of the current economic crisis and a media blitz did the trick.
Sad news today. The normally intelligent people of Ireland capitulated to a fear-mongering propaganda campaign, and voted for the Lisbon Treaty, 2:1.
National sovereignty in all of Europe is now a thing of the past. The “Treaty” is in fact a constitution, and all European national constitutions are now subservient to the terms of this self-amending Treaty.
‘Self-amending’ is all important: it means that the Brussels bureaucracy can add add new amendments to the Treaty at any time, and those amendments also supersede national constitutions. The Irish people were told that the Treaty “does not bring in military conscription”, “does not affect taxation”, and many other things that people in Ireland are not in favor of.
This was all lies. True, the Treaty itself does not talk about those specific items, but because of self-amending, those specific items can now “be brought in” at any time in the future. And Ireland’s voting power, in opposing measures, is very greatly reduced by the Treaty.
If the Treaty were a ‘good’ constitution, all of this might not be a bad thing. But it’s not. The structure of the EU government is very much less democratic than any of the current European governments.
Most of the power is vested in the EU Commission, none of whose members are elected. It’s like a Politburo, with lots of power and no accountability. And its polices are very much oriented around neoliberalism, globalism, privatization, and deregulation – the very things that have brought the global economy to a standstill and accelerated unemployment in Europe.
Both Holland and France had voted against the constitution, when it was openly called a constitution. So the bigwigs repackaged the very same thing and called it a “Treaty”. They did this so the people of France and Holland wouldn’t get another chance to vote it down. The “Treaty” could be passed by the legislatures – except in the case of Ireland.
The people of Ireland, God bless them, voted against the “Treaty” the first time they were given a chance to vote. But they weren’t able to keep their heads in the face of the overwhelming media blitz about how the world would fall apart if Ireland voted No a second time.
Europe is now under the firm control of a handful of unaccountable elitists in the EU Commission. Where they will take Europe is anybody’s guess, and there will be no democratic voice present in setting that direction.
Today will live in infamy, as its consequences become visible.
NOTA BENE: None of this is sophisticated thinking. Just musing aloud over the Sunday Times …
Seems an update’s in order re recent hesimeditations about whether the dollar’s slide is over.
The G7 finance peeps the other day barely peeped about the weak dollar. Something of a surprise, to find them so supine.
This encourages one to think — after a month of low visibility — that the dollar will continue to slide. Perhaps even abruptly. And that gold, therefore, will indeed hold the $1000 mark and now shoot for something higher.
THEN AGAIN:
1. If our current wars — on each side of Iran — were to enlarge as a result of the latest contretemps, it could push people to the dollar anyway, seeking safe harbor.
But … The recent Iran story was mostly about public perception, in that the Western powers and Israel had the intelligence on the underground site before. Some heightened visibility perhaps …
But the talks with Iran last week were apparently net positive, and it seems best guess that the Western powers will try to build on them, rather than set things afire anew.
2. And it will be interesting to see how the Irish vote on the Lisbon treaty will effect the Euro-Dollar trade. Centralization, at any given moment, can cut either way, I suppose.
European manufacturers consider $1.50 (per Euro) a line in the sand of sorts: they don’t want the Euro to cross it. Currently roughly $1.47.
If it jags to $1.50 this week in the wake of the G7, the big question will be how stiffly the Euro banks will come in to protect it (by buying dollars).
So maybe, to be conservative: If that $1.50 line gets decisively crossed, tested and holds … There is no telling how far the dollar may fall, or how high gold (in dollars) may rise.
That’s the DXY index, which measures the dollar against a basket of six major currencies. Dollar bulls in August said 78 was the bottom. Past two weeks were thinking 76. Now … Perhaps destined to test that old 72 level, sooner than later.
The story of September converges from four corners:
1. Weeks ago — on 9/11 — two top-drawer generals, Charles Krulak and Joseph Hoar, came out of retirement to blast Cheney on torture in the Miami Herald.
The timing and some particulars struck me as odd, portentous and a tiny bit ominous: Why this and why now?
Hoar was the commander of the Pentagon’s Central Command, which oversees the mideast, from 1991 to 1994.
And his co-author is a former Commandant (top dog) of the Marines and — curious — is the son of another General Krulak, Victor, who once was an ally of JFK in his struggle with the Pentagon over Vietnam policy. (See last link above.)
2. Nine days later, September 20, President Obama, during a whirlwind tour of five Sunday talk shows, went off topic (health care) to talk about Pakghanistan — and for the first time publicly cast doubt upon the policy that he had cheerleaded without reservation during the long campaign, and had then inherited:
He said before he decided whether to send more troops, he needed to determine whether the United States was pursuing the proper military strategy.
“The first question is, are we doing the right thing?” Mr. Obama said on CNN’s State of the Union. “Are we pursuing the right strategy?”
The next morning 66 pages from General Stanley McChrystal appeared in the Washington Post, predicting “failure” in Afghanistan unless the Pentagon’s request for tens of thousands of new pairs of boots were soon granted.
3. Five days later, we noted remarks by General Michael Lenhert — who built and for a time ran the Bush-Cheney Gitmo prison — denouncing the prison as a bad idea from Day One. He didn’t name Cheney (in reports I’ve seen) but, simultaneously, Cheney was telling think tanks that Obama is wrong to try to shut the prison down.
Harpers also noticed Lenhert’s remarks and quickly put out a piece that extends them to explicitly target the former vice president: “The Generals vs The Cheneys.”
Krulak & Hoar on torture. Lenhert on Gitmo. Three big guns, trained upon Cheney as he bellows about the speaking circuit. Curious …
It seemed curious that such men would suddenly raise their profiles and such a ruckus, merely to blast a retired, old and disgraced vice president, on issues that the new president had already turned around.
Or … Was Dick speaking for more than himself — for something yet vital in the power scheme?
4. Days later (early this week), NewsMax.com, which feeds Fox News fodder, published an elaborate memo explaining why a military coup to solve the “Obama problem” was “not unrealistic” and not a bad idea.
Chris Matthews jumped in, and appropriately so. See the Hardball clip embedded in the Harpers link in item 3 above.
And note that the clip comes from Human Rights First — and that the two military men Matthews talks with — including Lt General Henry Soyster, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, criticizing Cheney’s fear-mongering and his Gitmo campaign — are explicitly associated with Human Rights First on its webpage.
And note that Generals Krulak and Hoar, too, associate themselves with HRF.
Reading the Krulak-Hoar piece alone, in its oddness, provoked a question: Do these high generals sniff something unpatriotic fermenting within the wide circles of their brassy acquaintance?
However that may be, that a roomful of such men suddenly gathered to speak loudly against Cheney in September is reason to not summarily dismiss the NewsMax blip as lunatic-fringe fantasy signifying nothing.
The Beer Hall Putsch was lunatic fri — HA !
Matthews goes on to mention MacArthur — versus Truman! — in the same breath as McChrystal — and then asks his brassy guests if we’ve seen this movie and it’s Seven Days in May — HA !
A fortiori forsooth: It seems that sometime this summer a bevy of high-brow brass was organized to oppose a right-wing call-it-what-you-will — movement? — the poster children of which are Cheney and, for the moment, McChrystal.
Gathering under a Human Rights banner to grapple with Dick, blow by blow, topic by topic, might be a way for august generals to tell their wide acquaintance the Preakness pool has been closed until further notice.
That President Obama would sooner or later have to face down the Pentagon he inherited with so little complaint (disturbing neither Gates nor Mullen nor their vision for victory in Pakghanistan) — and would then tred paths parallel to those of JFK and LBJ — was apparent and a worry during the interregnum last winter.
Vegas odds remain stacked against deposing any president with an army.
But the bile-laden bullet points in the NewsMax memo itemize real thoughts inspiring right-wingers with rage. JFK’s inner circle initiated the production of the Seven Days in May film, and saw the work through with unprecedented support — evacuating the White House to make way for the film crew — because by 1963 they knew the novel was not fantasy.
This is one more reason Obama will be lucky to have a second term and live to tell of it.
Personally I agree with the Times. But any hope of getting serious reform passed will founder on this if it’s pushed.
If Obama is LBJ, then Romney taking office in 2013 would be Nixon in 1968, with the mess in Vietnam/Pakghanistan nowhere near settled, the country and the Democratic Party utterly at odds with itself, soldiers shooting college students (see Pittsburgh, directly below), etc.
It’s in the script. Hard to see how Obama can re-write on the fly.
I love him for what he thinks and the spirit he has brought to politics. But more and more I fear that Hillary would have been more effective meat at this moment to feed to this sausage grinder of a Union.
Media talking points by a person named Perry at NewsMax, which feeds Fox News — re the bright side of a military coup to solve the “Obama problem” — were published on the NewsMax site this week.
Then taken down Wednesday (two days ago).
Obama Risks a Domestic Military Intervention
There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America’s military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the “Obama problem.” Don’t dismiss it as unrealistic.
America isn’t the Third World. If a military coup does occur here it will be civilized. That it has never happened doesn’t mean it wont. Describing what may be afoot is not to advocate it. So, view the following through military eyes:
# Officers swear to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Unlike enlisted personnel, they do not swear to “obey the orders of the president of the United States.”
# Top military officers can see the Constitution they are sworn to defend being trampled as American institutions and enterprises are nationalized …
Goes on at some length.
First thought: a hoax.
But the crudeness of the language, screwy thoughts about the Constitution, were reminiscent of totalitarian hoplites that populate literature from behind the Iron Curtain.
And soon a Spokesvolker for Newsmax acknowledged the memo, telling TPM (where the text has been salvaged, linked above) that Perry was an “unpaid blogger.” The NewsMax site itself says he “contributes a regular column.”
What’s most important about the NewsMax piece is that it is not an isolated incident out standing in its field.
Rather, it’s surrounded by a bevy of high-brow generals who came out of retirement or obscurity in September to counter the Rumbling Thunder of the Miserable Media Tour of Dick Cheney, who should be history but apparently isn’t.
The Huffington Post dismisses the NewsMax memo as lunatic fringe. Um-hmm. Beer Hall Putsch … And again — but at least makes clear that, yes, the author is an ass raised on Age of Reagan television. Let’s see …
